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diff --git a/old/7allk10.txt b/old/7allk10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b6d877d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7allk10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18814 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet +by Rev. Charles Kingsley et al + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet + +Author: Rev. Charles Kingsley et al + +Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8374] +[This file was first posted on July 4, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET *** + + + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +ALTON LOCKE, + +TAILOR AND POET + +An Autobiography. + +BY THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, + +CANON OF WESTMINSTER, RECTOR OF EVERSLEY, +AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN AND PRINCE OF WALES, + +_NEW EDITION_, + + + + + + + +WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR BY THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ., Q.C., + +AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS." + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +PREFATORY MEMOIR + +CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY + +PREFACE--TO THE UNDERGRADUATES OF CAMBRIDGE + +PREFACE--TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN + +CHAPTER I. A POET'S CHILDHOOD + +CHAPTER II. THE TAILORS' WORKROOM + +CHAPTER III. SANDY MACKAYE + +CHAPTER IV. TAILORS AND SOLDIERS + +CHAPTER V. THE SCEPTIC'S MOTHER + +CHAPTER VI. THE DULWICH GALLERY + +CHAPTER VII. FIRST LOVE + +CHAPTER VIII. LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE + +CHAPTER IX. POETRY AND POETS + +CHAPTER X. HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS + +CHAPTER XI. "THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE" + +CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE + +CHAPTER XIII. THE LOST IDOL FOUND + +CHAPTER XIV. A CATHEDRAL TOWN + +CHAPTER XV. THE MAN OF SCIENCE + +CHAPTER XVI. CULTIVATED WOMEN + +CHAPTER XVII. SERMONS IN STONES + +CHAPTER XVIII. MY FALL + +CHAPTER XIX. SHORT AND SAD + +CHAPTER XX. PEGASUS IN HARNESS + +CHAPTER XXI. THE SWEATER'S DEN + +CHAPTER XXII. AN EMERSONIAN SERMON + +CHAPTER XXIII. THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS + +CHAPTER XXIV. THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN + +CHAPTER XXV. A TRUE NOBLEMAN + +CHAPTER XXVI. THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR + +CHAPTER XXVII. THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY + +CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN + +CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRIAL + +CHAPTER XXX. PRISON THOUGHTS + +CHAPTER XXXI. THE NEW CHURCH + +CHAPTER XXXII. THE TOWER OF BABEL + +CHAPTER XXXIII. A PATRIOT'S REWARD + +CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TENTH OF APRIL + +CHAPTER XXXV. THE LOWEST DEEP + +CHAPTER XXXVI. DREAMLAND + +CHAPTER XXXVII. THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. MIRACLES ASD SCIENCE + +CHAPTER XXXIX. NEMESIS + +CHAPTER XL. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE + +CHAPTER XLI. FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD + + + + +PREFATORY MEMOIR. + + +The tract appended to this preface has been chosen to accompany this +reprint of _Alton Locke_ in order to illustrate, from another side, a +distinct period in the life of Charles Kingsley, which stands out very much +by itself. It may be taken roughly to have extended from 1848 to 1856. It +has been thought that they require a preface, and I have undertaken to +write it, as one of the few survivors of those who were most intimately +associated with the author at the time to which the works refer. + +No easy task; for, look at them from what point we will, these years must +be allowed to cover an anxious and critical time in modern English history; +but, above all, in the history of the working classes. In the first of them +the Chartist agitation came to a head and burst, and was followed by the +great movement towards association, which, developing in two directions and +by two distinct methods--represented respectively by the amalgamated Trades +Unions, and Co-operative Societies--has in the intervening years entirely +changed the conditions of the labour question in England, and the relations +of the working to the upper and middle classes. It is with this, the social +and industrial side of the history of those years, that we are mainly +concerned here. Charles Kingsley has left other and more important writings +of those years. But these are beside our purpose, which is to give some +such slight sketch of him as may be possible within the limits of a +preface, in the character in which he was first widely known, as the most +outspoken and powerful of those who took the side of the labouring classes, +at a critical time--the crisis in a word, when they abandoned their old +political weapons, for the more potent one of union and association, which +has since carried them so far. + +To no one of all those to whom his memory is very dear can this seem a +superfluous task, for no writer was ever more misunderstood or better +abused at the time, and after the lapse of almost a quarter of a century +the misunderstanding would seem still to hold its ground. For through all +the many notices of him which appeared after his death in last January, +there ran the same apologetic tone as to this part of his life's work. +While generally, and as a rule cordially, recognizing his merits as an +author and a man, the writers seemed to agree in passing lightly over this +ground. When it was touched it was in a tone of apology, sometimes tinged +with sarcasm, as in the curt notice in the "Times"--"He was understood, to +be the Parson Lot of those 'Politics for the People' which made no little +noise in their time, and as Parson Lot he declared in burning language +that to his mind the fault in the 'People's Charter' was that it did not +go nearly far enough." And so the writer turns away, as do most of his +brethren, leaving probably some such impression as this on the minds of +most of their readers--"Young men of power and genius are apt to start with +wild notions. He was no exception. Parson Lot's sayings and doings may well +be pardoned for what Charles Kingsley said and did in after years; so let +us drop a decent curtain over them, and pass on." + +Now, as very nearly a generation has passed since that signature used to +appear at the foot of some of the most noble and vigorous writing of our +time, readers of to-day are not unlikely to accept this view, and so to +find further confirmation and encouragement in the example of Parson Lot +for the mischievous and cowardly distrust of anything like enthusiasm +amongst young men, already sadly too prevalent in England. If it were only +as a protest against this "surtout point de zele" spirit, against which it +was one of Charles Kingsley's chief tasks to fight with all his strength, +it is well that the facts should be set right. This done, readers may +safely be left to judge what need there is for the apologetic tone in +connection with the name, the sayings, and doings of Parson Lot. + +My first meeting with him was in the autumn of 1848, at the house of Mr. +Maurice, who had lately been appointed Reader of Lincolns Inn. No parochial +work is attached to that post, so Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of +a small district in the parish in which he lived, and had set a number of +young men, chiefly students of the Inns of Court who had been attracted by +his teaching, to work in it. Once a week, on Monday evenings, they used +to meet at his house for tea, when their own work was reported upon and +talked over. Suggestions were made and plans considered; and afterwards a +chapter of the Bible was read and discussed. Friends and old pupils of Mr. +Maurice's, residing in the country, or in distant parts of London, were +in the habit of coming occasionally to these meetings, amongst whom was +Charles Kingsley. He had been recently appointed Rector of Eversley, and +was already well known as the author of _The Saint's Tragedy_, his first +work, which contained the germ of much that he did afterwards. + +His poem, and the high regard and admiration which Mr. Maurice had for +him, made him a notable figure in that small society, and his presence was +always eagerly looked for. What impressed me most about him when we first +met was, his affectionate deference to Mr. Maurice, and the vigour and +incisiveness of everything he said and did. He had the power of cutting +out what he meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever met. +The next thing that struck one was the ease with which he could turn from +playfulness, or even broad humour, to the deepest earnest. At first I think +this startled most persons, until they came to find out the real deep +nature of the man; and that his broadest humour had its root in a faith +which realized, with extraordinary vividness, the fact that God's Spirit +is actively abroad in the world, and that Christ is in every man, and made +him hold fast, even in his saddest moments,--and sad moments were not +infrequent with him,--the assurance that, in spite of all appearances, the +world was going right, and would go right somehow, "Not your way, or my +way, but God's way." The contrast of his humility and audacity, of his +distrust in himself and confidence in himself, was one of those puzzles +which meet us daily in this world of paradox. But both qualities gave him a +peculiar power for the work he had to do at that time, with which the name +of Parson Lot is associated. + +It was at one of these gatherings, towards the end of 1847 or early in +1848, when Kingsley found himself in a minority of one, that he said +jokingly, he felt much as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, +when he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law. The name Parson Lot +was then and there suggested, and adopted by him, as a familiar _nom de +plume_, He used it from 1848 up to 1856; at first constantly, latterly +much more rarely. But the name was chiefly made famous by his writings in +"Politics for the People," the "Christian Socialist," and the "Journal of +Association," three periodicals which covered the years from '48 to '52; by +"Alton Locke"; and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best known, "Cheap +Clothes and Nasty," is now republished. + +In order to understand and judge the sayings and writings of Parson Lot +fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of the England of that +day. Through the winter of 1847-8, amidst wide-spread distress, the cloud +of discontent, of which Chartism was the most violent symptom, had been +growing darker and more menacing, while Ireland was only held down by main +force. The breaking-out of the revolution on the Continent in February +increased the danger. In March there were riots in London, Glasgow, +Edinburgh, Liverpool, and other large towns. On April 7th, "the Crown +and Government Security Bill," commonly called "the Gagging Act," was +introduced by the Government, the first reading carried by 265 to 24, +and the second a few days later by 452 to 35. On the 10th of April the +Government had to fill London with troops, and put the Duke of Wellington +in command, who barricaded the bridges and Downing Street, garrisoned the +Bank and other public buildings, and closed the Horse Guards. + +When the momentary crisis had passed, the old soldier declared in the House +of Lords that "no great society had ever suffered as London had during the +preceding days," while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief +magistrates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept +in London. In April, the Lord Chancellor, in introducing the Crown and +Government Security Bill in the House of Lords, referred to the fact +that "meetings were daily held, not only in London, but in most of the +manufacturing towns, the avowed object of which was to array the people +against the constituted authority of these realms." For months afterwards +the Chartist movement, though plainly subsiding, kept the Government in +constant anxiety; and again in June, the Bank, the Mint, the Custom House, +and other public offices were filled with troops, and the Houses of +Parliament were not only garrisoned but provisioned as if for a siege. + +From that time, all fear of serious danger passed away. The Chartists were +completely discouraged, and their leaders in prison; and the upper and +middle classes were recovering rapidly from the alarm which had converted +a million of them into special constables, and were beginning to doubt +whether the crisis had been so serious after all, whether the disaffection +had ever been more than skin deep. At this juncture a series of articles +appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ on "London Labour and the London Poor," +which startled the well-to-do classes out of their jubilant and scornful +attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair minded people +wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some rioting, but that +the metropolis had escaped the scenes which had lately been enacted in +Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental capitals. + +It is only by an effort that one can now realize the strain to which the +nation was subjected during that winter and spring, and which, of course, +tried every individual man also, according to the depth and earnestness of +his political and social convictions and sympathies. The group of men who +were working under Mr. Maurice were no exceptions to the rule. The work of +teaching and visiting was not indeed neglected, but the larger questions +which were being so strenuously mooted--the points of the people's charter, +the right of public meeting, the attitude of the labouring-class to the +other classes--absorbed more and more of their attention. Kingsley was +very deeply impressed with the gravity and danger of the crisis--more so, +I think, than almost any of his friends; probably because, as a country +parson, he was more directly in contact with one class of the poor than any +of them. How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he +reflected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be read in +the pages of "Yeast," which was then coming out in "Fraser." As the winter +months went on this sadness increased, and seriously affected his health. + +"I have a longing," he wrote to Mr. Ludlow, "to do _something_--what, God +only knows. You say, 'he that believeth will not make haste,' but I think +he that believeth must _make_ haste, or get damned with the rest. But I +will do anything that anybody likes--I have no confidence in myself or in +anything but God. I am not great enough for such times, alas! '_ne pour +faire des vers_,' as Camille Desmoulins said." + +This longing became so strong as the crisis in April approached, that he +came to London to see what could be done, and to get help from Mr. Maurice, +and those whom he had been used to meet at his house. He found them a +divided body. The majority were sworn in as special constables, and several +had openly sided with the Chartists; while he himself, with Mr. Maurice and +Mr. Ludlow, were unable to take active part with either side. The following +extract from a letter to his wife, written on the 9th of April, shows how +he was employed during these days, and how he found the work which he was +in search of, the first result of which was the publication of "those +'Politics for the People' which made no small noise in their times"-- + +"_April_ 11th, 1848.--The events of a week have been crowded into a few +hours. I was up till four this morning--writing posting placards, under +Maurice's auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the +rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns somewhere +to help these poor wretches to the truest alms?--to words, texts from the +Psalms, anything which may keep even one man from cutting his brother's +throat to-morrow or Friday? _Pray, pray, help us._ Maurice has given me +a highest proof of confidence. He has taken me to counsel, and we are to +have meetings for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are to +bring out a new set of real "Tracts for the Times," addressed to the higher +orders. Maurice is _a la hauteur des circonstances_--determined to make a +decisive move. He says, if the Oxford Tracts did wonders, why should not +we? Pray for us. A glorious future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow +seem to have driven away all my doubts and sorrow, and I see the blue sky +again, and my Father's face!" + +The arrangements for the publication of "Politics for the People" were soon +made; and in one of the earliest numbers, for May, 1848, appeared the paper +which furnishes what ground there is for the statement, already quoted, +that "he declared, in burning language, that the People's Charter did not +go far enough" It was No. 1 of "Parson Lot's Letters to the Chartists." Let +us read it with its context. + +"I am not one of those who laugh at your petition of the 10th of April: I +have no patience with those who do. Suppose there were but 250,000 honest +names on that sheet--suppose the Charter itself were all stuff--yet you +have still a right to fair play, a patient hearing, an honourable and +courteous answer, whichever way it may be. But _my only quarrel with the +Charter is that it does not go far enough in reform_. I want to see you +_free_, but I do not see that what you ask for will give you what you want. +I think you have fallen into just the same mistake as the rich, of whom you +complain--the very mistake which has been our curse and our nightmare. I +mean the mistake of fancying that _legislative_ reform is _social_ reform, +or that men's hearts can be changed by Act of Parliament. If any one will +tell me of a country where a Charter made the rogues honest, or the idle +industrious, I will alter my opinion of the Charter, but not till then. It +disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough, +but a poor, bald constitution-mongering cry as ever I heard. The French cry +of 'organization of labour' is worth a thousand of it, but yet that does +not go to the bottom of the matter by many a mile." And then, after telling +how he went to buy a number of the Chartist newspaper, and found it in a +shop which sold "flash songsters," "the Swell's Guide," and "dirty milksop +French novels," and that these publications, and a work called "The Devil's +Pulpit," were puffed in its columns, he goes on, "These are strange times. +I thought the devil used to befriend tyrants and oppressors, but he seems +to have profited by Burns' advice to 'tak a thought and mend.' I thought +the struggling freeman's watchword was: 'God sees my wrongs.' 'He hath +taken the matter into His own hands.' 'The poor committeth himself unto +Him, for He is the helper of the friendless.' But now the devil seems all +at once to have turned philanthropist and patriot, and to intend himself to +fight the good cause, against which he has been fighting ever since Adam's +time. I don't deny, my friends, it is much cheaper and pleasanter to be +reformed by the devil than by God; for God will only reform society on the +condition of our reforming every man his own self--while the devil is quite +ready to help us to mend the laws and the parliament, earth and heaven, +without ever starting such an impertinent and 'personal' request, as that +a man should mend himself. _That_ liberty of the subject he will always +respect."--"But I say honestly, whomsoever I may offend, the more I have +read of your convention speeches and newspaper articles, the more I am +convinced that too many of you are trying to do God's work with the devil's +tools. What is the use of brilliant language about peace, and the majesty +of order, and universal love, though it may all be printed in letters a +foot long, when it runs in the same train with ferocity, railing, mad, +one-eyed excitement, talking itself into a passion like a street woman? Do +you fancy that after a whole column spent in stirring men up to fury, a few +twaddling copybook headings about 'the sacred duty of order' will lay the +storm again? What spirit is there but the devil's spirit in bloodthirsty +threats of revenge?"--"I denounce the weapons which you have been deluded +into employing to gain you your rights, and the indecency and profligacy +which you are letting be mixed up with them! Will you strengthen and +justify your enemies? Will you disgust and cripple your friends? Will you +go out of your way to do wrong? When you can be free by fair means will you +try foul? When you might keep the name of Liberty as spotless as the Heaven +from which she comes, will you defile her with blasphemy, beastliness, and +blood? When the cause of the poor is the cause of Almighty God, will you +take it out of His hands to entrust it to the devil? These are bitter +questions, but as you answer them so will you prosper." + +In Letter II. he tells them that if they have followed, a different +"Reformer's Guide" from his, it is "mainly the fault of us parsons, who +have never told you that the true 'Reformer's Guide,' the true poor man's +book, the true 'Voice of God against tyrants, idlers, and humbugs, was the +Bible.' The Bible demands for the poor as much, and more, than they demand +for themselves; it expresses the deepest yearnings of the poor man's heart +far more nobly, more searchingly, more daringly, more eloquently than any +modern orator has done. I say, it gives a ray of hope--say rather a certain +dawn of a glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, +communism, organization of labour, or any other Morrison's-pill-measure can +give--and yet of a future, which will embrace all that is good in these--a +future of conscience, of justice, of freedom, when idlers and oppressors +shall no more dare to plead parchments and Acts of Parliament for their +iniquities. I say the Bible promises this, not in a few places only, but +throughout; it is the thought which runs through the whole Bible, justice +from God to those whom men oppress, glory from God to those whom men +despise. Does that look like the invention of tyrants, and prelates? You +may sneer, but give me a fair hearing, and if I do not prove my words, then +call me the same hard name which I shall call any man, who having read +the Bible, denies that it is the poor man's comfort and the rich man's +warning." + +In subsequent numbers (as afterwards in the "Christian Socialist," and the +"Journal of Association") he dwells in detail on the several popular cries, +such as, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," illustrating them from +the Bible, urging his readers to take it as the true Radical Reformer's +Guide, if they were longing for the same thing as he was longing for--to +see all humbug, idleness, injustice, swept out of England. His other +contributions to these periodicals consisted of some of his best short +poems: "The Day of the Lord;" "The Three Fishers;" "Old and New," and +others; of a series of Letters on the Frimley murder; of a short story +called "The Nun's Pool," and of some most charming articles on the pictures +in the National Gallery, and the collections in the British Museum, +intended to teach the English people how to use and enjoy their own +property. + +I think I know every line which was ever published under the signature +Parson Lot; and I take it upon myself to say, that there is in all that +"burning language" nothing more revolutionary than the extracts given above +from his letters to the Chartists. + +But, it may be said, apart from his writings, did not Parson Lot declare +himself a Chartist in a public meeting in London; and did he not preach in +a London pulpit a political sermon, which brought up the incumbent, who had +invited him, to protest from the altar against the doctrine which had just +been delivered? + +Yes! Both statements are true. Here are the facts as to the speech, those +as to the sermon I will give in their place. In the early summer of 1848 +some of those who felt with C. Kingsley that the "People's Charter" had not +had fair play or courteous treatment, and that those who signed it had real +wrongs to complain of, put themselves into communication with the leaders, +and met and talked with them. At last it seemed that the time was come for +some more public meeting, and one was called at the Cranbourn Tavern, over +which Mr. Maurice presided. After the president's address several very +bitter speeches followed, and a vehement attack was specially directed +against the Church and the clergy. The meeting waxed warm, and seemed +likely to come to no good, when Kingsley rose, folded his arms across his +chest, threw his head back, and began--with the stammer which always came +at first when he was much moved, but which fixed every one's attention at +once--"I am a Church of England parson"--a long pause--"and a Chartist;" +and then he went on to explain how far he thought them right in their claim +for a reform of Parliament; how deeply he sympathized with their sense of +the injustice of the law as it affected them; how ready he was to help in +all ways to get these things set right; and then to denounce their methods, +in very much the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to +the Chartists. Probably no one who was present ever heard a speech which +told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect did not +pass away. The most violent speaker on that occasion was one of the staff +of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight of him entirely for more +than twenty years, and saw him again, a little grey shrivelled man, by +Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead. + +The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to continue the +series, which they did with a success which surprised no one more than +themselves. Kingsley's opinion of them may be gathered from the following +extract from a letter to his wife:-- + +"_June_ 4, 1848, Evening.--A few words before bed. I have just come home +from the meeting. No one spoke but working men, gentlemen I should call +them, in every sense of the term. Even _I_ was perfectly astonished by the +courtesy, the reverence to Maurice, who sat there like an Apollo, their +eloquence, the brilliant, nervous, well-chosen language, the deep simple +earnestness, the rightness and moderation of their thoughts. And these are +the _Chartists_, these are the men who are called fools and knaves--who are +refused the rights which are bestowed on every profligate fop.... It is +God's cause, fear not He will be with us, and if He is with us, who shall +be against us?" + +But while he was rapidly winning the confidence of the working classes, he +was raising up a host of more or less hostile critics in other quarters by +his writings in "Politics for the People," which journal was in the midst +of its brief and stormy career. At the end of June, 1848, he writes to Mr. +Ludlow, one of the editors-- + +"I fear my utterances have had a great deal to do with the 'Politics'' +unpopularity. I have got worse handled than any of you by poor and rich. +There is one comfort, that length of ears is in the donkey species always +compensated by toughness of hide. But it is a pleasing prospect for me (if +you knew all that has been said and written about Parson Lot), when I look +forward and know that my future explosions are likely to become more and +more obnoxious to the old gentlemen, who stuff their ears with cotton, and +then swear the children are not screaming." + +"Politics for the People" was discontinued for want of funds; but its +supporters, including all those who were working under Mr. Maurice--who, +however much they might differ in opinions, were of one mind as to the +danger of the time, and the duty of every man to do his utmost to meet that +danger--were bent upon making another effort. In the autumn, Mr. Ludlow, +and others of their number who spent the vacation abroad, came back with +accounts of the efforts at association which were being made by the +workpeople of Paris. + +The question of starting such associations in England as the best means +of fighting the slop system--which the "Chronicle" was showing to lie at +the root of the misery and distress which bred Chartists--was anxiously +debated. It was at last resolved to make the effort, and to identify the +new journal with the cause of Association, and to publish a set of tracts +in connection with it, of which Kingsley undertook to write the first, +"Cheap Clothes and Nasty." + +So "the Christian Socialist" was started, with Mr. Ludlow for editor, the +tracts on Christian Socialism begun under Mr. Maurice's supervision, and +the society for promoting working-men's associations was formed out of the +body of men who were already working with Mr. Maurice. The great majority +of these joined, though the name was too much for others. The question of +taking it had been much considered, and it was decided, on the whole, to be +best to do so boldly, even though it might cost valuable allies. Kingsley +was of course consulted on every point, though living now almost entirely +at Eversley, and his views as to the proper policy to be pursued may be +gathered best from the following extracts from letters of his to Mr. +Ludlow-- + +"We must touch the workman at all his points of interest. First and +foremost at association--but also at political rights, as grounded both +on the Christian ideal of the Church, and on the historic facts of the +Anglo-Saxon race. Then national education, sanitary and dwelling-house +reform, the free sale of land, and corresponding reform of the land laws, +moral improvement of the family relation, public places of recreation (on +which point I am very earnest), and I think a set of hints from history, +and sayings of great men, of which last I have been picking up from Plato, +Demosthenes, &c." + +1849.--"This is a puling, quill-driving, soft-handed age--among our +own rank, I mean. Cowardice is called meekness; to temporize is to be +charitable and reverent; to speak truth, and shame the devil, is to +offend weak brethren, who, somehow or other, never complain of their weak +consciences till you hit them hard. And yet, my dear fellow, I still remain +of my old mind--that it is better to say too much than too little, and more +merciful to knock a man down with a pick-axe than to prick him to death +with pins. The world says, No. It hates anything demonstrative, or violent +(except on its own side), or unrefined." + +1849.--"The question of property is one of these cases. We must face it in +this age--simply because it faces us."--"I want to commit myself--I want +to make others commit themselves. No man can fight the devil with a long +ladle, however pleasant it may be to eat with him with one. A man never +fishes well in the morning till he has tumbled into the water." + +And the counsels of Parson Lot had undoubtedly great weight in giving an +aggressive tone both to the paper and the society. But if he was largely +responsible for the fighting temper of the early movement, he, at any rate, +never shirked his share of the fighting. His name was the butt at which all +shafts were aimed. As Lot "seemed like one that mocked to his sons-in-law," +so seemed the Parson to the most opposite sections of the British nation. +As a friend wrote of him at the time, he "had at any rate escaped the +curse of the false prophets, 'Woe unto you when all men shall speak well +of you.'" Many of the attacks and criticisms were no doubt aimed not so +much at him personally as at the body of men with whom, and for whom, +he was working; but as he was (except Mr. Maurice) the only one whose +name was known, he got the lion's share of all the abuse. The storm +broke on him from all points of the compass at once. An old friend and +fellow-contributor to "Politics for the People," led the Conservative +attack, accusing him of unsettling the minds of the poor, making them +discontented, &c. Some of the foremost Chartists wrote virulently against +him for "attempting to justify the God of the Old Testament," who, they +maintained, was unjust and cruel, and, at any rate, not the God "of the +people." The political economists fell on him for his anti-Malthusian +belief, that the undeveloped fertility of the earth need not be overtaken +by population within any time which it concerned us to think about. The +quarterlies joined in the attack on his economic heresies. The "Daily +News" opened a cross fire on him from the common-sense Liberal battery, +denouncing the "revolutionary nonsense, which is termed Christian +Socialisms"; and, after some balancing, the "Guardian," representing in +the press the side of the Church to which he leant, turned upon him in a +very cruel article on the republication of "Yeast" (originally written +for "Fraser's Magazine"), and accused him of teaching heresy in doctrine, +and in morals "that a certain amount of youthful profligacy does no real +permanent harm to the character, perhaps strengthens it for a useful and +religious life." + +In this one instance Parson Lot fairly lost his temper, and answered, "as +was answered to the Jesuit of old--_mentiris impudentissime_." With the +rest he seemed to enjoy the conflict and "kept the ring," like a candidate +for the wrestling championship in his own county of Devon against all +comers, one down another come on. + +The fact is, that Charles Kingsley was born a fighting man, and believed +in bold attack. "No human power ever beat back a resolute forlorn hope," +he used to say; "to be got rid of, they must be blown back with grape and +canister," because the attacking party have all the universe behind them, +the defence only that small part which is shut up in their walls. And he +felt most strongly at this time that hard fighting was needed. "It is a +pity" he writes to Mr. Ludlow, "that telling people what's right, won't +make them do it; but not a new fact, though that ass the world has quite +forgotten it; and assures you that dear sweet 'incompris' mankind only +wants to be told the way to the millennium to walk willingly into it--which +is a lie. If you want to get mankind, if not to heaven, at least out of +hell, kick them out." And again, a little later on, in urging the policy +which the "Christian Socialist" should still follow-- + +1851.--"It seems to me that in such a time as this the only way to fight +against the devil is to attack him. He has got it too much his own way +to meddle with us if we don't meddle with him. But the very devil has +feelings, and if you prick him will roar...whereby you, at all events, gain +the not-every-day-of-the-week-to-be-attained benefit of finding out where +he is. Unless, indeed, as I suspect, the old rascal plays ventriloquist (as +big grasshoppers do when you chase them), and puts you on a wrong scent, +by crying 'Fire!' out of saints' windows. Still, the odds are if you prick +lustily enough, you make him roar unawares." + +The memorials of his many controversies lie about in the periodicals of +that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up will be well repaid, and +struck with the vigour of the defence, and still more with the complete +change in public opinion, which has brought the England of to-day clean +round to the side of Parson Lot. The most complete perhaps of his fugitive +pieces of this kind is the pamphlet, "Who are the friends of Order?" +published by J. W. Parker and Son, in answer to a very fair and moderate +article in "Fraser's Mazagine." The Parson there points out how he and +his friends were "cursed by demagogues as aristocrats, and by tories as +democrats, when in reality they were neither." And urges that the very fact +of the Continent being overrun with Communist fanatics is the best argument +for preaching association here. + +But though he faced his adversaries bravely, it must not be inferred that +he did not feel the attacks and misrepresentations very keenly. In many +respects, though housed in a strong and vigorous body, his spirit was an +exceedingly tender and sensitive one. I have often thought that at this +time his very sensitiveness drove him to say things more broadly and +incisively, because he was speaking as it were somewhat against the grain, +and knew that the line he was taking would be misunderstood, and would +displease and alarm those with whom he had most sympathy. For he was by +nature and education an aristocrat in the best sense of the word, believed +that a landed aristocracy was a blessing to the country, and that no +country would gain the highest liberty without such a class, holding its +own position firmly, but in sympathy with the people. He liked their habits +and ways, and keenly enjoyed their society. Again, he was full of reverence +for science and scientific men, and specially for political economy and +economists, and desired eagerly to stand well with them. And it was a most +bitter trial to him to find himself not only in sharp antagonism with +traders and employers of labour, which he looked for, but with these +classes also. + +On the other hand many of the views and habits of those with whom he found +himself associated were very distasteful to him. In a new social movement, +such as that of association as it took shape in 1849-50, there is certain +to be great attraction for restless and eccentric persons, and in point +of fact many such joined it. The beard movement was then in its infancy, +and any man except a dragoon who wore hair on his face was regarded as a +dangerous character, with whom it was compromising to be seen in any public +place--a person in sympathy with _sansculottes_, and who would dispense +with trousers but for his fear of the police. Now whenever Kingsley +attended a meeting of the promoters of association in London, he was +sure to find himself in the midst of bearded men, vegetarians, and other +eccentric persons, and the contact was very grievous to him. "As if we +shall not be abused enough," he used to say, "for what we must say and do +without being saddled with mischievous nonsense of this kind." To less +sensitive men the effect of eccentricity upon him was almost comic, as +when on one occasion he was quite upset and silenced by the appearance of +a bearded member of Council at an important deputation in a straw hat and +blue plush gloves. He did not recover from the depression produced by those +gloves for days. Many of the workmen, too, who were most prominent in the +Associations were almost as little to his mind--windy inflated kind of +persons, with a lot of fine phrases in their mouths which they did not know +the meaning of. + +But in spite of all that was distasteful to him in some of its +surroundings, the co-operative movement (as it is now called) entirely +approved itself to his conscience and judgment, and mastered him so that he +was ready to risk whatever had to be risked in fighting its battle. Often +in those days, seeing how loath Charles Kingsley was to take in hand, much +of the work which Parson Lot had to do, and how fearlessly and thoroughly +he did it after all, one was reminded of the old Jewish prophets, such as +Amos the herdsman of Tekoa--"I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's +son, but I was an herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit: and the Lord +took me as I followed the flock, and said unto me, Go prophesy unto my +people Israel." + +The following short extracts from his correspondence with Mr. Ludlow, as to +the conduct of the "Christian Socialist," and his own contributions to it, +may perhaps serve to show how his mind was working at this time:-- + +_Sept., 1850_.--"I cannot abide the notion of Branch Churches or Free +(sect) Churches, and unless my whole train of thought alters, I will resist +the temptation as coming from the devil. Where I am I am doing God's work, +and when the Church is ripe for more, the Head of the Church will put the +means our way. You seem to fancy that we may have a _Deus quidam Deceptor_ +over us after all. If I did I'd go and blow my dirty brains out and be rid +of the whole thing at once. I would indeed. If God, when people ask Him to +teach and guide them, does not; if when they confess themselves rogues and +fools to Him, and beg Him to make them honest and wise, He does not, but +darkens them, and deludes them into bogs and pitfalls, is he a Father? You +fall back into Judaism, friend." + +_Dec., 1850_.--"Jeremiah is my favourite book now. It has taught me more +than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, and am minded to speak +no more words in this name (Parson Lot); and yet all these bullyings teach +one, correct one, warn one--show one that God is not leaving one to go +one's own way. 'Christ reigns,' quoth Luther." + +It was at this time, in the winter of 1850, that "Alton Locke" was +published. He had been engaged on it for more than a year, working at it +in the midst of all his controversies. The following extracts from his +correspondence with Mr. Ludlow will tell readers more about it than any +criticism, if they have at all realized the time at which it was written, +or his peculiar work in that time. + +_February, 1849_.--"I have hopes from the book I am writing, which has +revealed itself to me so rapidly and methodically that I feel it comes +down from above, and that only my folly can spoil it, which I pray against +daily." + +1849.--"I think the notion a good one (referring to other work for the +paper which he had been asked to do), but I feel no inspiration at all +that way; and I dread being tempted to more and more bitterness, harsh +judgment, and evil speaking. I dread it. I am afraid sometimes I shall end +in universal snarling. Besides, my whole time is taken up with my book, +and _that_ I do feel inspired to write. But there is something else which +weighs awfully on my mind--(the first number of _Cooper's Journal_, which +he sent me the other day). Here is a man of immense influence openly +preaching Strausseanism to the workmen, and in a fair, honest, manly way +which must tell. Who will answer him? Who will answer Strauss? [Footnote: +He did the work himself. After many interviews, and a long correspondence +with him, Thomas Cooper changed his views, and has been lecturing and +preaching for many years as a Christian.] Who will denounce him as a vile +aristocrat, robbing the poor man of his Saviour--of the ground of all +democracy, all freedom, all association--of the Charter itself? _Oh, si +mihi centum voces et ferrea lingua!_ Think about _that_." + +_January, 1850_.--"A thousand thanks for your letter, though it only shows +me what I have long suspected, that I know hardly enough yet to make the +book what it should be. As you have made a hole, you must help to fill it. +Can you send me any publication which would give me a good notion of the +Independents' view of politics, also one which would give a good notion of +the Fox-Emerson-Strauss school of Blague-Unitarianism, which is superseding +dissent just now. It was with the ideal of Calvinism, and its ultimate +bearing on the people's cause, that I wished to deal. I believe that there +must be internecine war between the people's church--_i.e._, the future +development of Catholic Christianity, and Calvinism even in its mildest +form, whether in the Establishment or out of it--and I have counted the +cost and will give every _party_ its slap in their turn. But I will alter, +as far as I can, all you dislike." + +_August, 1850_.--"How do you know, dearest man, that I was not right in +making the Alton of the second volume different from the first? In showing +the individuality of the man swamped and warped by the routine of misery +and discontent? How do you know that the historic and human interest of the +book was not intended to end with Mackay's death, in whom old radicalism +dies, 'not having received the promises,' to make room for the radicalism +of the future? How do you know that the book from that point was not +intended to take a mythic and prophetic form, that those dreams come in for +the very purpose of taking the story off the ground of the actual into the +deeper and wider one of the ideal, and that they do actually do what they +were intended to do? How do you know that my idea of carrying out Eleanor's +sermons in practice were just what I could not--and if I could, dared not, +give? that all that I could do was to leave them as seed, to grow by itself +in many forms, in many minds, instead of embodying them in some action +which would have been both as narrow as my own idiosyncrasy, gain the +reproach of insanity, and be simply answered by--'If such things have been +done, where are they?' and lastly, how do you know that I had not a special +meaning in choosing a civilized fine lady as my missionary, one of a class +which, as it does exist, God must have something for it to do, and, as +it seems, plenty to do, from the fact that a few gentlemen whom I could +mention, not to speak of Fowell Buxtons, Howards, Ashleys, &c., have +done, more for the people in one year than they have done for themselves +in fifty? If I had made her an organizer, as well as a preacher, your +complaint might have been just. My dear man, the artist is a law unto +himself--or rather God is a law to him, when he prays, as I have earnestly +day after day about this book--to be taught how to say the right thing +in the right way--and I assure you I did not get tired of my work, but +laboured as earnestly at the end as I did at the beginning. The rest of +your criticism, especially about the interpenetration of doctrine and +action, is most true, and shall be attended to.--Your brother, + +"G. K." + +The next letter, on the same topic, in answer to criticisms on "Alton +Locke," is addressed to a brother clergyman-- + +"EVERSLEY, _January 13, 1851_. + +"Rec. dear Sir,--I will answer your most interesting letter as shortly as +I can, and if possible in the same spirit of honesty as that in which you +have written to me. + +"_First_, I do not think the cry 'Get on' to be anything but a devil's cry. +The moral of my book is that the working man who tries to get on, to desert +his class and rise above it, enters into a lie, and leaves God's path for +his own--with consequences. + +"_Second_, I believe that a man might be as a tailor or a costermonger, +every inch of him a saint, a scholar, and a gentleman, for I have seen some +few such already. I believe hundreds of thousands more would be so, if +their businesses were put on a Christian footing, and themselves given by +education, sanitary reforms, &c., the means of developing their own latent +capabilities--I think the cry, 'Rise in Life,' has been excited by the very +increasing impossibility of being anything but brutes while they struggle +below. I know well all that is doing in the way of education, &c., but +I do assert that the disease of degradation has been for the last forty +years increasing faster than the remedy. And I believe, from experience, +that when you put workmen into human dwellings, and give them a Christian +education, so far from wishing discontentedly to rise out of their class, +or to level others to it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become +sensible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their labour as a +true calling in God's Church, now that it is cleared from the accidentia +which made it look, in their eyes, only a soulless drudgery in a devil's +workshop of a _World_. + +"_Third_, From the advertisement of an 'English Republic' you send, I can +guess who will be the writers in it, &c., &c., being behind the scenes. +It will come to nought. Everything of this kind is coming to nought now. +The workmen are tired of idols, ready and yearning for the Church and the +Gospel, and such men as your friend may laugh at Julian Harney, Feargus +O'Connor, and the rest of that smoke of the pit. Only we live in a great +crisis, and the Lord requires great things of us. The fields are white to +harvest. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He may send forth +labourers into His harvest. + +"_Fourth_, As to the capacities of working-men, I am afraid that your +excellent friend will find that he has only the refuse of working +intellects to form his induction on. The devil has got the best long ago. +By the neglect of the Church, by her dealing (like the Popish Church and +all weak churches) only with women, children, and beggars, the cream +and pith of working intellect is almost exclusively self-educated, and, +therefore, alas! infidel. If he goes on as he is doing, lecturing on +history, poetry, science, and all the things which the workmen crave for, +and can only get from such men as H----, Thomas Cooper, &c., mixed up with +Straussism and infidelity, he will find that he will draw back to his +Lord's fold, and to his lecture room, slowly, but surely, men, whose powers +will astonish him, as they have astonished me. + +"_Fifth_, The workmen whose quarrels you mention are not Christians, or +socialists either. They are of all creeds and none. We are teaching them +to become Christians by teaching them gradually that true socialism, true +liberty, brotherhood, and true equality (not the carnal dead level equality +of the Communist, but the spiritual equality of the church idea, which +gives every man an equal chance of developing and using God's gifts, and +rewards every man according to his work, without respect of persons) is +only to be found in loyalty and obedience to Christ. They do quarrel, but +if you knew how they used to quarrel before association, the improvement +since would astonish you. And the French associations do not quarrel +at all. I can send you a pamphlet on them, if you wish, written by an +eyewitness, a friend of mine. + +"_Sixth_, If your friend wishes to see what can be made of workmen's +brains, let him, in God's name, go down to Harrow Weald, and there see Mr. +Monro--see what he has done with his own national school boys. I have his +opinion as to the capabilities of those minds, which we, alas! now so sadly +neglect. I only ask him to go and ask of that man the question which you +have asked of me. + +"_Seventh_, May I, in reference to myself and certain attacks on me, say, +with all humility, that I do not speak from hearsay now, as has been +asserted, from second-hand picking and stealing out of those 'Reports on +Labour and the Poor,' in the 'Morning Chronicle,' which are now being +reprinted in a separate form, and which I entreat you to read if you wish +to get a clear view of the real state of the working classes. + +"From my cradle, as the son of an active clergyman, I have been brought +up in the most familiar intercourse with the poor in town and country. My +mother, a second Mrs. Fry, in spirit and act. For fourteen years my father +has been the rector of a very large metropolitan parish--and I speak what I +know, and testify that which I have seen. With earnest prayer, in fear and +trembling, I wrote my book, and I trust in Him to whom I prayed that He has +not left me to my own prejudices or idols on any important point relating +to the state of the possibilities of the poor for whom He died. Any use +which you choose you can make of this letter. If it should seem worth your +while to honour me with any further communications, I shall esteem them a +delight, and the careful consideration of them a duty.--Believe me, Rev. +and dear Sir, your faithful and obedient servant, + +"C. KINGSLEY." + +By this time the society for promoting associations was thoroughly +organized, and consisted of a council of promoters, of which Kingsley was a +member, and a central board, on which the managers of the associations and +a delegate from each of them sat. The council had published a number of +tracts, beginning with "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," which had attracted the +attention of many persons, including several of the London clergy, who +connected themselves more or less closely with the movement. Mr. Maurice, +Kingsley, Hansard, and others of these, were often asked to preach on +social questions, and when in 1851, on the opening of the Great Exhibition, +immense crowds of strangers were drawn to London, they were specially +in request. For many London incumbents threw open their churches, and +organized series of lectures, specially bearing on the great topic of the +day. It was now that the incident happened which once more brought upon +Kingsley the charge of being a revolutionist, and which gave him more pain +than all other attacks put together. One of the incumbents before referred +to begged Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures, and to +ask Kingsley to do so; assuring Mr. Maurice that he "had been reading +Kingsley's works with the greatest interest, and earnestly desired to +secure him as one of his lecturers." "I promised to mention this request to +him," Mr. Maurice says, "though I knew he rarely came to London, and seldom +preached except in his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience, +that he would preach a sermon on the 'Message of the Church to the +Labouring Man.' I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent intimated +the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not only with a previous +knowledge of our published writings, but expressly because he had that +knowledge. I pledge you my word that no questions were asked as to what we +were going to say, and no guarantees given. Mr. Kingsley took precisely +that view of the message of the Church to labouring men which every reader +of his books would have expected him to take." + +Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 16 to 21: "The spirit of the +Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the +poor," &c. What then was that gospel? Kingsley asks, and goes on--"I assert +that the business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian +nation is, to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the fullest, +deepest, widest meaning of those three great words; that in as far as he so +does, he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with his Lord's blessing +on him; that in as far as he does not he is no priest at all, but a traitor +to God and man"; and again, "I say that these words express the very +pith and marrow of a priest's business; I say that they preach freedom, +equality, and brotherhood to rich and poor for ever and ever." Then he goes +on to warn his hearers how there is always a counterfeit in this world of +the noblest message and teaching. + +Thus there are two freedoms--the false, where a man is free to do what he +likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. + +Two equalities--the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters, +to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the good, to the +wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice in the grossest inequality; +the true, wherein each man has equal power to educate and use whatever +faculties or talents God has given him, be they less or more. This is the +divine equality which the Church proclaims, and nothing else proclaims as +she does. + +Two brotherhoods--the false, where a man chooses who shall be his brothers, +and whom he will treat as such; the true, in which a man believes that +all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, or the will of man, +but by the will of God, whose children they all are alike. The Church has +three special possessions and treasures. The Bible, which proclaims man's +freedom, Baptism his equality, the Lord's Supper his brotherhood. + +At the end of this sermon (which would scarcely cause surprise to-day +if preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Chapel Royal), the +incumbent got up at the altar and declared his belief that great part of +the doctrine of the sermon was untrue, and that he had expected a sermon of +an entirely different kind. To a man of the preacher's vehement temperament +it must have required a great effort not to reply at the moment. The +congregation was keenly excited, and evidently expected him to do so. +He only bowed his head, pronounced the blessing, and came down from the +pulpit. + +I must go back a little to take up the thread of his connection with, and +work for, the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations. After it +had passed the first difficulties of starting, he was seldom able to +attend either Council or Central Board. Every one else felt how much more +important and difficult work he was doing by fighting the battle in the +press, down at Eversley, but he himself was eager to take part in the +everyday business, and uneasy if he was not well informed as to what was +going on. + +Sometimes, however, he would come up to the Council, when any matter +specially interesting to him was in question, as in the following example, +when a new member of the Council, an Eton master, had objected to some +strong expressions in one of his letters on the Frimley murder, in the +"Christian Socialist":-- + +1849.--"The upper classes are like a Yankee captain sitting on the safety +valve, and serenely whistling--but what will be will be. As for the worthy +Eton parson, I consider it infinitely expedient that he be entreated to +vent his whole dislike in the open Council forthwith, under a promise on my +part not to involve him in any controversy or reprisals, or to answer in +any tone except that of the utmost courtesy and respect. Pray do this. It +will at once be a means of gaining him, and a good example, please God, +to the working men; and for the Frimley letter, put it in the fire if you +like, or send it back to have the last half re-written, or 'anything else +you like, my pretty little dear.'" + +But his prevailing feeling was getting to be, that he was becoming an +outsider-- + +"Nobody deigns to tell me," he wrote to me, "how things go on, and who +helps, and whether I can help. In short, I know nothing, and begin to fancy +that you, like some others, think me a lukewarm and timeserving aristocrat, +after I have ventured more than many, because I had more to venture." + +The same feeling comes out in the following letter, which illustrates +too, very well, both his deepest conviction as to the work, the mixture +of playfulness and earnestness with which he handled it, and his humble +estimate of himself. It refers to the question of the admission of a new +association to the Union. It was necessary, of course, to see that the +rules of a society, applying for admission to the Union, were in proper +form, and that sufficient capital was forthcoming, and the decision lay +with the Central Board, controlled in some measure by the Council of +Promoters. + +An association of clay-pipe makers had applied for admission, and had been +refused by the vote of the central board. The Council, however, thought +there were grounds for reconsidering the decision, and to strengthen the +case for admission, Kingsley's opinion was asked. He replied:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _May 31, 1850_. + +"The sight of your handwriting comforted me--for nobody takes any notice of +me, not even the printers; so I revenge myself by being as idle as a dog, +and fishing, and gardening, and basking in this glorious sun. But your +letter set me thanking God that he has raised up men to do the work of +which I am not worthy. As for the pipe-makers, give my compliments to the +autocrats, and tell them it is a shame. The Vegetarians would have quite +as much right to refuse the Butchers, because, forsooth, theirs is now +discovered not to be a necessary trade. Bosh! The question is this--If +association be a great Divine law and duty, the realization of the Church +idea, no man has _a right_ to refuse any body of men, into whose heart +God has put it to come and associate. It may be answered that these men's +motives are self-interested. I say, 'Judge no man.' You dare not refuse +a heathen baptism because you choose to think that his only motive for +turning Christian is the selfish one of saving his own rascally soul. No +more have you a right to refuse to men an entrance into the social Church. +They must come in, and they will, because association is not men's dodge +and invention but God's law for mankind and society, which He has made, and +we must not limit. I don't know whether I am intelligible, but what's more +important, I know I am right. Just read this to the autocrats, and tell +them, with my compliments, they are Popes, Tyrants, Manichees, Ascetics, +Sectarians, and everything else that is abominable; and if they used as +many pipes as I do, they would know the blessing of getting them cheap, +and start an associate baccy factory besides. Shall we try? But, this one +little mistake excepted (though, if they repeat it, it will become a great +mistake, and a wrong, and a ruinous wrong), they are much better fellows +than poor I, and doing a great deal more good, and at every fresh news of +their deeds I feel like Job's horse, when he scents the battle afar off." + +No small part of the work of the Council consisted in mediating and +arbitrating in the disputes between the associates and their managers; +indeed, such work kept the legal members of the board (none of whom were +then overburdened with regular practice) pretty fully occupied. Some such +dispute had arisen in one of the most turbulent of these associations, and +had been referred to me for settlement. I had satisfied myself as to the +facts, and considered my award, and had just begun to write out the draft, +when I was called away from my chambers, and left the opening lines lying +on my desk. They ran as follows:--"The Trustees of the Mile End Association +of Engineers, seeing that the quarrels between the associates have not +ceased"--at which word I broke off. On returning to my chambers a quarter +of an hour later, I found a continuation in the following words:-- + + "And that every man is too much inclined to behave himself like a beast, + In spite of our glorious humanity, which requires neither God nor priest, + Yet is daily praised and plastered by ten thousand fools at least-- + Request Mr. Hughes' presence at their jawshop in the East, + Which don't they wish they may get it, for he goes out to-night to feast + At the Rev. C. Kingsley's rectory, Chelsea, where he'll get his gullet + greased + With the best of Barto Valle's port, and will have his joys increased + By meeting his old college chum, McDougal the Borneo priest-- + So come you thief, and drop your brief, + At six o'clock without relief; + And if you won't may you come to grief, + Says Parson Lot the Socialist Chief, + Who signs his mark at the foot of the leaf--thus" + +and, at the end, a clenched fist was sketched in a few bold lines, and +under it, "Parson Lot, his mark" written. + +I don't know that I can do better than give the history of the rest of the +day. Knowing his town habits well, I called at Parker, the publisher's, +after chambers, and found him there, sitting on a table and holding forth +on politics to our excellent little friend, John Wm. Parker, the junior +partner. + +We started to walk down to Chelsea, and a dense fog came on before we had +reached Hyde Park Corner. Both of us knew the way well; but we lost it half +a dozen times, and his spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened. "Isn't +this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all +round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way +on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again; +but you get home at last--there's always light enough for that." After a +short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you want to live to be old?" +I said I had never thought on the subject; and he went on, "I dread it more +than I can say. To feel one's powers going, and to end in snuff and stink. +Look at the last days of Scott and Wordsworth, and Southey." I suggested +St. John. "Yes," he said, "that's the right thing, and will do for Bunsen, +and great, tranquil men like him. The longer they live the better for all. +But for an eager, fiery nature like mine, with fierce passions eating one's +life out, it won't do. If I live twenty years I know what will happen to +me. The back of my brain will soften, and I shall most likely go blind." + +The Bishop got down somehow by six. The dinner did not last long, for the +family were away, and afterwards we adjourned to the study, and Parson Lot +rose to his best. He stood before the fire, while the Bishop and I took the +two fireside arm chairs, and poured himself out, on subject after subject, +sometimes when much moved taking a tramp up and down the room, a long +clay pipe in his right hand (at which he gave an occasional suck; it was +generally out, but he scarcely noticed it), and his left hand passed behind +his back, clasping the right elbow. It was a favourite attitude with him, +when he was at ease with his company. + +We were both bent on drawing him out; and the first topic, I think, raised +by the Bishop was, Fronde's history, then recently published. He took up +the cudgels for Henry VIII., whom we accused of arbitrariness. Henry was +not arbitrary; arbitrary men are the most obstinate of men? Why? Because +they are weak. The strongest men are always ready to hear reason and change +their opinions, because the strong man knows that if he loses an opinion +to-day he can get just as good a one to-morrow in its place. But the weak +man holds on to his opinion, because he can't get another, and he knows it. + +Soon afterwards he got upon trout fishing, which was a strong bond of union +between him and me, and discoursed on the proper methods of fishing chalk +streams. "Your flies can't be too big, but they must be on small gut, not +on base viol fiddle strings, like those you brought down to Farnham last +year. I tell you gut is the thing that does it. Trout know that flies don't +go about with a ring and a hand pole through their noses, like so many +prize bulls of Lord Ducie's." + +Then he got on the possible effect of association on the future of England, +and from that to the first International Exhibition, and the building which +was going up in Hyde Park. + +"I mean to run a muck soon," he said, "against all this talk about genius +and high art, and the rest of it. It will be the ruin of us, as it has been +of Germany. They have been for fifty years finding out, and showing people +how to do everything in heaven and earth, and have done nothing. They are +dead even yet, and will be till they get out of the high art fit. We were +dead, and the French were dead till their revolution; but that brought us +to life. Why didn't the Germans come to life too? Because they set to work +with their arts, sciences, and how to do this, that, and the other thing, +and doing nothing. Goethe was, in great part, the ruin of Germany. He was +like a great fog coming down on the German people, and wrapping them up." + +Then he, in his turn, drew the Bishop about Borneo, and its people, and +fauna and flora; and we got some delightful stories of apes, and converts, +and honey bears, Kingsley showing himself, by his questions, as familiar +with the Bornean plants and birds, as though he had lived there. Later on +we got him on his own works, and he told us how he wrote. "I can't think, +even on scientific subjects, except in the dramatic form. It is what Tom +said to Harry, and what Harry answered him. I never put pen to paper till I +have two or three pages in my head, and see them as if they were printed. +Then I write them off, and take a turn in the garden, and so on again." We +wandered back to fishing, and I challenged his keenness for making a bag. +"Ah!" he said, "that's all owing to my blessed habit of intensity, which +has been my greatest help in life. I go at what I am about as if there were +nothing else in the world for the time being. That's the secret of all +hard-working men; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements. +Luckily for me I can stop from all work, at short notice, and turn head +over heels in the sight of all creation, and say, I won't be good or bad, +or wise, or anything, till two o'clock to-morrow." + +At last the Bishop would go, so we groped our way with him into the King's +Road, and left him in charge of a link-boy. When we got back, I said +something laughingly about his gift of talk, which had struck me more that +evening than ever before. + +"Yes," he said, "I have it all in me. I could be as great a talker as any +man in England, but for my stammering. I know it well; but it's a blessed +thing for me. You must know, by this time, that I'm a very shy man, and +shyness and vanity always go together. And so I think of what every fool +will say of me, and can't help it. When a man's first thought is not +whether a thing is right or wrong, but what will Lady A., or Mr. B. say +about it, depend upon it he wants a thorn in the flesh, like my stammer. +When I am speaking for God, in the pulpit, or praying by bedsides, I never +stammer. My stammer is a blessed thing for me. It keeps me from talking in +company, and from going out as much as I should do but for it." + +It was two o'clock before we thought of moving, and then, the fog being as +bad as ever, he insisted on making me up a bed on the floor. While we were +engaged in this process, he confided to me that he had heard of a doctor +who was very successful in curing stammering, and was going to try him. I +laughed, and reminded him of his thorn in the flesh, to which he replied, +with a quaint twinkle of his eye, "Well, that's true enough. But a man has +no right to be a nuisance, if he can help it, and no more right to go about +amongst his fellows stammering, than he has to go about stinking." + +At this time he was already at work on another novel; and, in answer to a +remonstrance from a friend, who was anxious that he should keep ail his +strength for social reform, writes-- + +1851.--"I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the +duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my calling +in novel writing. But has He not taught me all these very things _by my_ +parish priest life? Did He, too, let me become a strong, daring, sporting, +wild man of the woods for nothing? Surely the education He has given me so +different from that which authors generally receive, points out to me a +peculiar calling to preach on these points from my own experience, as it +did to good old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our own day to that truly +noble man, Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe, '_si tu sequi la tua, +stella_,' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead me _into_ +temptation, but _through_ it, as Maurice says. Without Him all places and +methods of life are equally dangerous--with Him, all equally safe. Pray for +me, for in myself I am weaker of purpose than a lost grey hound, lazier +than a dog in rainy weather." + +While the co-operative movement was spreading in all directions, the same +impulse was working amongst the trades unions, and the engineers had set +the example of uniting all their branches into one society. In this winter +they believed themselves strong enough to try conclusions with their +employers. The great lock-out in January, 1852, was the consequence. The +engineers had appealed to the Council of Promoters to help them in putting +their case--which had been much misrepresented--fairly before the public, +and Kingsley had been consulted as the person best able to do it. He had +declined to interfere, and wrote me the following letter to explain his +views. It will show how far he was an encourager of violent measures or +views:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _January 28, 1852_. + +"You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in this Amalgamated +Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am bound to say why I have not, and +how far I wish my friends to interfere in it. + +"I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be wise in +interfering between masters and men; because--1. I question whether the +points at issue between them can be fairly understood by any persons not +conversant with the practical details of the trade... + +"2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they might. For +instance, if it be true that they themselves have invented many, or most, +of the improvements in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in +favour of keeping out unskilled labourers, which is unanswerable, and yet, +that they have never used--viz.: 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands +by these improvements, while we have no remuneration for this inventive +talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduction +of unskilled labour more easy. Therefore, the only way in which we can get +anything like a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make you a +present over and above our skilled labour, for which you bargained, is to +demand that we, who invent the machines, if we cannot have a share in the +profits of them, shall at least have the exclusive privilege of using them, +instead of their being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a +fair argument; but I have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer. + +"3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought by the men +themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is to cry out +against us, as Greg did. 'These Christian Socialists are a set of mediaeval +parsons, who want to hinder the independence and self-help of the men, and +bring them back to absolute feudal maxims; and then, with the most absurd +inconsistency, when we get up a corporation workshop, to let the men work +on the very independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they +turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, The men can't be +independent of capitalists; these associations will fail _because_ the men +are helping themselves'--showing that what they mean is, that the men shall +be independent of every one but themselves--independent of legislators, +parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, and every one that tries to help +them by moral agents; but the slaves of the capitalists, bound to them by +a servitude increasing instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the +only way in which we can clear the cause of this calumny is to let the men +fight their own battle; to prevent any one saying, 'These men are the tools +of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruinously blackening to +them in the public eyes, as it would be to let the cry get abroad, 'This is +a Socialist movement, destructive of rights of property, communism, Louis +Blanc and the devil, &c.' You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets +up on such occasions--having no scruples about calling himself hard names, +when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old women. + +"Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needlewomen or slop-workers. +They are the most intelligent and best educated workmen, receiving incomes +often higher than a gentleman's son whose education has cost L1000, and if +they can't fight their own battles, no men in England can, and the people +are not ripe for association, and we must hark back into the competitive +rot heap again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked--to +see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage and no +favour, but not by public, but by private influence. + +"But we can help them in another way, by showing them the way to associate. +That is quite a distinct question from their quarrel with their masters, +and we shall be very foolish if we give the press a handle for mixing up +the two. We have a right to say to masters, men, and public, 'We know and +care nothing about the iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us, +wishing to be shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to +do--well or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate; and we will +help and teach them to do _that_ to the very utmost of our power.' + +"The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with lynx eyes, +calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell the truth about them, +and fight manfully with our pens for them. But we shall never be able to +get the ears of the respectabilities and the capitalists, if we appear at +this stage of the business. What we must say is, 'If you are needy and +enslaved, we will fight for you from pity, whether you be associated or +competitive. But you are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved; +and therefore we will only fight for you in proportion as you become +associates. Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your +sake.'--Yours ever affectionate, C. KINGSLEY." + +In the summer of 1852 (mainly by the continued exertions of the members of +the Council, who had supplied Mr. Slaney's committee with all his evidence, +and had worked hard in other ways for this object) a Bill for legalizing +Industrial Associations was about to be introduced into the House of +Commons. It was supposed at one time that it would be taken in hand by the +Government of Lord Derby, then lately come into office, and Kingsley had +been canvassing a number of persons to make sure of its passing. On hearing +that a Cabinet Minister would probably undertake it, he writes-- + +"Let him be assured that he will by such a move do more to carry out true +Conservatism, and to reconcile the workmen with the real aristocracy, than +any politician for the last twenty years has done. The truth is, we are in +a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger--which is the +vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of +departure of principles and parties which will hereafter become great and +powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis +school is dead too-and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are better +than dead lions, let us see what the live dogs are. + +"1.--The Peelites, who will ultimately, be sure, absorb into themselves all +the remains of Whiggery, and a very large proportion of the Conservative +party. In an effete unbelieving age, like this, the Sadducee and the +Herodian will be the most captivating philosopher. A scientific laziness, +lukewarmness, and compromise, is a cheery theory for the young men of +the day, and they will take to it _con amore_. I don't complain of Peel +himself. He was a great man, but his method of compromise, though useful +enough in particular cases when employed by a great man, becomes a most +dastardly "_schema mundi_" when taken up by a school of little men. +Therefore the only help which we can hope for from the Peelites is that +they will serve as ballast and cooling pump to both parties, but their very +trimming and moderation make them fearfully likely to obtain power. It +depends on the wisdom of the present government, whether they do or not. + +"2.--Next you have the Manchester school, from whom Heaven defend us; for +of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and anarchic and atheistic schemes +of the universe, the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst. I have no +language to express my contempt for it, and therefore I quote what Maurice +wrote me this morning. 'If the Ministry would have thrown Protection to +the dogs (as I trust they have, in spite of the base attempts of the Corn +Law Leaguers to goad them to committing themselves to it, and to hold them +up as the people's enemies), and thrown themselves into social measures, +who would not have clung to them, to avert that horrible catastrophe +of a Manchester ascendency, which I believe in my soul would be fatal +to intellect, morality, and freedom, and will be more likely to move a +rebellion among the working men than any Tory rule which can be conceived.' + +"Of course it would. To pretend to be the workmen's friends, by keeping +down the price of bread, when all they want thereby is to keep down wages, +and increase profits, and in the meantime to widen the gulf between the +working man and all that is time-honoured, refined, and chivalrous in +English society, that they may make the men their divided slaves, that +is-perhaps half unconsciously, for there are excellent men amongst +them--the game of the Manchester School." + +"I have never swerved from my one idea of the last seven years, that the +real battle of the time is, if England is to be saved from anarchy and +unbelief, and utter exhaustion caused by the competitive enslavement of +the masses, not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory--let the dead bury +their dead-but the Church, the gentlemen, and the workman, against the +shop-keepers and the Manchester School. The battle could not have been +fought forty years ago, because, on one side, the Church was an idle +phantasm, the gentleman too ignorant, the workman too merely animal; while, +on the other, the Manchester cotton-spinners were all Tories, and the +shopkeepers were a distinct class interest from theirs. But now these +two latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop-keeping and +labour-buying in the cheapest market shines forth in the person of Moses & +Son, and both cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say 'This is the man!'" and +join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our +true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the +present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them, +and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining +every nerve to keep off--a competitive United States, a democracy before +which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such +as you and I should wish to see, is impossible without a Church and a +Queen, and, as I believe, without a gentry. On the conduct of statesmen it +will depend whether we are gradually and harmoniously to develop England +on her ancient foundations, or whether we are to have fresh paralytic +governments succeeding each other in doing nothing, while the workmen and +the Manchester School fight out the real questions of the day in ignorance +and fury, till the '_culbute generale_' comes, and gentlemen of ancient +family, like your humble servant, betake themselves to Canada, to escape, +not the Amalgamated Engineers, but their 'masters,' and the slop-working +savages whom their masters' system has created, and will by that time have +multiplied tenfold. + +"I have got a Thames boat on the lake at Bramshill, and am enjoying +vigorous sculls. My answer to 'Fraser' is just coming out; spread it where +you can." + +In the next year or two the first excitement about the co-operative +movement cooled down. Parson Lot's pen was less needed, and he turned to +other work in his own name. Of the richness and variety of that work this +is not the place to speak, but it all bore on the great social problems +which had occupied him in the earlier years. The Crimean war weighed on +him like a nightmare, and modified some of his political opinions. On the +resignation of Lord Aberdeen's Government on the motion for inquiry into +the conduct of the war, he writes, February 5, 1855, "It is a very bad job, +and a very bad time, be sure, and with a laughing House of Commons we shall +go to Gehenna, even if we are not there already--But one comfort is, that +even Gehenna can burn nothing but the chaff and carcases, so we shall be +none the poorer in reality. So as the frost has broken gloriously, I wish +you would get me a couple of dozen of good flies, viz., cock a bondhues, +red palmers with plenty of gold twist; winged duns, with bodies of hare's +ear and yellow mohair mixed well; hackle duns with grey bodies, and a wee +silver, these last tied as palmers, and the silver ribbed all the way down. +If you could send them in a week I shall be very glad, as fishing begins +early." + +In the midst of the war he was present one day at a council meeting, after +which the manager of one of the associations referring to threatened bread +riots at Manchester, asked Kingsley's opinion as to what should be done. +"There never were but two ways," he said, "since the beginning of the world +of dealing with a corn famine. One is to let the merchants buy it up and +hold it as long as they can, as we do. And this answers the purpose best in +the long run, for they will be selling corn six months hence when we shall +want it more than we do now, and makes us provident against our wills. +The other is Joseph's plan." Here the manager broke in, "Why didn't our +Government step in then, and buy largely, and store in public granaries?" +"Yes," said Kingsley, "and why ain't you and I flying about with wings and +dewdrops hanging to our tails. Joseph's plan won't do for us. What minister +would we trust with money enough to buy corn for the people, or power to +buy where he chose." And he went on to give his questioner a lecture in +political economy, which the most orthodox opponent of the popular notions +about Socialism would have applauded to the echo. + +By the end of the year he had nearly finished "Westward Ho!"--the most +popular of his novels, which the war had literally wrung out of him. He +writes-- + +? "_December 18, 1855_. + +"I am getting more of a Government man every day. I don't see how they +could have done better in any matter, because I don't see but that _I_ +should have done a thousand times worse in their place, and that is the +only fair standard. + +"As for a ballad--oh! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is +burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious fellows, except 'God +save the Queen and them.' I tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot +sit down to make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it--or blundered with +hundred like Alfred Tennyson. He is no Tyrtaeus, though he has a glimpse of +what Tyrtaeus ought to be. But I have not even that; and am going rabbit +shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his calling, and my novel +is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book" ('Westward Ho!') +"will be out the middle or end of January, if the printers choose. It is +a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing doctrine profitable for these +times. My only pain is that I have been forced to sketch poor Paddy as a +very worthless fellow then, while just now he is turning out a hero. I have +made the deliberate _amende honorable_ in a note." + +Then, referring to some criticism of mine on 'Westward Ho!'--"I suppose you +are right as to Amyas and his mother; I will see to it. You are probably +right too about John Hawkins. The letter in Purchas is to me unknown, +but your conception agrees with a picture my father says he has seen of +Captain John (he thinks at Lord Anglesey's, at Beaudesert) as a prim, hard, +terrier-faced, little fellow, with a sharp chin, and a dogged Puritan eye. +So perhaps I am wrong: but I don't think _that_ very important, for there +must have been sea-dogs of my stamp in plenty too." Then, referring to the +Crimean war--"I don't say that the two cases are parallel. I don't ask +England to hate Russia as she was bound to hate Spain, as God's enemy; but +I do think that a little Tudor pluck and Tudor democracy (paradoxical as +the word may seem, and inconsistently as it was carried out then) is just +what we want now." + +"Tummas! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, in Stanley's +'Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old Wordsworth would have writ +thereon! If I didn't cry like a babby over it. What a brick of a horse he +must have been, and what a brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must +have been, to have his commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his +horse; and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor how, nor nothing. I +wonder if anybody'll keep _our_ commandments after we be gone, much less +say, 'Eat, eat, O horse of Abou Kingsley!'" + +By this time the success of "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia" had placed him in +the first rank of English writers. His fame as an author, and his character +as a man, had gained him a position which might well have turned any man's +head. There were those amongst his intimate friends who feared that it +might be so with him, and who were faithful enough to tell him so. And I +cannot conclude this sketch better than by giving his answer to that one +of them with whom he had been most closely associated in the time when, as +Parson Lot, every man's hand had been against him-- + +"MY DEAR LUDLOW, + +"And for this fame, &c., + +"I know a little of her worth. + +"And I will tell you what I know, + +"That, in the first place, she is a fact, and as such, it is not wise to +ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well +as her front. + +"The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of +praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty; +Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is +it flesh or spirit? a difficult question; because tamed animals grow to +possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysician does not yet allow +them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when +misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between +good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of +every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest +filial and family affections, as the earliest mainspring of good actions? +Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary +lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the +praise of God alone is to be sought? Or are we to believe that the child is +intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful +fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use +his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise +of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter? I should say that the +last was the more reasonable. And this I will say, that if you bring up +any child to care nothing for the praise of its parents, its elders, its +pastors, and masters, you may make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic: +but you will neither make it a man, an Englishman, or a Christian. + +"But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honour which comes from +men, but the honour which comes from God only!' True, they do stand, and +our Lord's fact stands also, the fact that He has created every child to +be educated by an honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are +true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent +contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. And it does solve it; +and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same +fallacy as the old ascetic one. 'We must love God alone, therefore we must +love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently 'He who +loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath +not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love +their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider this, +you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires that person's +esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is our highest state. +Therefore, in our highest state, we shall desire all men's esteem. +Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in Christmas-day; if we believe in +Whitsunday, we shall believe that Christ is in all men, that God's spirit +is abroad in the earth, and therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and +calumny of men will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so; and, +on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing good +deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be signs and warrants +to us that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that 'honour and +glory' which Paul promises again and again, with no such scruples as yours, +to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God +within us; but we shall remember that there is also a voice of God without +us, which we must listen to; and that in a Christian land, _vox populi_, +patiently and discriminately listened to, is sure to be found not far off +from the _vox Dei_. + +"Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in listening +to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there is in the use +of any faculty. You may employ it, according to Divine reason and grace, +for ennobling and righteous purposes; or you may degrade it to carnal and +selfish ones; so you may degrade the love of praise into vanity, into +longing for the honour which comes from men, by pandering to their passions +and opinions, by using your powers as they would too often like to use +theirs, for mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart--_quam +pulchrum digito monstrari el diceri hic est_. That is the man who wrote the +fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giving way +to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian +who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning. +I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I +know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible; +in a word, to desire an honourable, and true renown for having done good +in my generation, has nothing to do with that; and the more I fear and +struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and +divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance into the +communion of saints. + +"Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that Christ is in +every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. Of course, again, +it will be very difficult to know who speaks by God's spirit, and who +sees by Christ's light in him; but surely the wiser, the humbler path, is +to give men credit for as much wisdom and rightness as possible, and to +believe that when one is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong. +For myself, on Looking back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the +obloquy which I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has +been almost all of it my own fault--that I have given the devil and bad +men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by _not caring_--by +fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going to speak what I knew +to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), +while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at +the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean +the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for +other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience +and wisdom on points which I had never considered--which took a pride in +shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and +fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me +only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, as well +as for my sins in the opposite direction; but for these sins especially, +because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others. + +"For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many readings in the +lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught me long before), that +there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not caring what men say. Of course +it is a feeling on which the spirit must fall back in hours of need, and +cry, 'Thou, God, knowest mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I +will speak; thou art true, though all men be liars!' But I am convinced +that that is a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live; +that it is only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest +self-examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For otherwise, +Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, in his +determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God within him, and so +he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there is a voice of God without +him. He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men; +he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise +prophesyings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. + +"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own +conscience and _schema mundi_, he loses the opportunity of correcting his +impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God +without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very +flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, +and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs +eclecticism, absence of tenderness _for_ men, for want of sympathy _with_ +men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his +own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and +if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. +This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged +Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die +rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with +James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and +Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many +pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, +have used both as instruments of their fanaticism. + +"Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to +guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father, +who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express +that discontent at times. To make my children '_banausoi_,' insolent and +scoffing radicals, believing in nobody and nothing but themselves, would be +perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watchword of my house, 'Never +mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are +plenty of good people in the world; that public opinion has pretty surely +an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage; +and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man +(sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men, +and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have +the blessing of God also; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that +ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within +them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently, +and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light +which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be +here still, though they had never been born or thought of. The antinomy +between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some +day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle? but I shall not +dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do +anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the +earth, and _not_ do the work which God has given them to do, because they +will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick +his congregation out of doors, and turn the key; and not like St. Paul, who +became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some. + +"Yours ever affectionately, with all Christmas blessings, + +"C. KINGSLEY. + +"FARLY COURT, _December 26, 1855_. + +"I should be very much obliged to you to show this letter to Maurice." + +One more letter only I will add, dated about the end of the "Parson Lot" +period. He had written to inform me that one of the old Chartist leaders, +a very worthy fellow, was in great distress, and to ask me to do what I +could for him. In my reply I had alluded somewhat bitterly to the apparent +failure of the Association movement in London, and to some of our blunders, +acknowledging how he had often seen the weak places, and warned us against +them. His answer came by return of post:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _May, 1856_. + +"DEAR TOM,--It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest; and don't cry +stinking fish, neither don't hollow till you're out of the wood--which you +oughtn't to have called yourself Tom fool, and blasphemed the holy name +thereby, till you knowed you was sich, which you wasn't, as appears by +particulars. And I have heard from T---- twice to-day, and he is agreeable, +which, if he wasn't, he is an ass, and don't know half a loaf is better +than no bread, and you musn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but all is as +right as a dog-fox down wind and vi. _millia passuum_, to the next gorse. +But this L25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are +inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him +L10--hopes it may be lending--and have written a desperate begging letter +to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T---- says to-night +that he has written to Forster about it--which he must have the small of +his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the +ginger-beer bottle out the longer he'll fight, or else he'll throw up the +sponge at once; for I know his pride. I think we can raise it somehow. I +have a last card in old ----, the judge who tried and condemned him, and is +the dearest old soul alive, only he will have it T---- showed dunghill, and +don't carry a real game nackle. If I am to tackle he you must send me back +those letters to appeal to his piety and 'joys as does abound,' as your +incomparable father remarks. When _will_ you give me that canticle? He +says Tom Taylor (I believe all the world is called Thomas) has behaved to +him like a brother, which, indeed, was to be expexed, and has promised +him copying at a shilling an hour, and _will_ give him a chop daily free +gracious; but the landlord won't wait, which we musn't neither. + +"Now, business afore pleasure. You are an old darling, and who says no, +I'd kick him, if it warn't for my cloth; but you are green in cottoning to +me about our '48 mess. Because why? I lost nothing--I risked nothing. You +fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's half-pay +(nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than +halfpence). I risked no money; 'cause why, I had none; but _made_ money out +of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a dirty beast I was. +I made L150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in +spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would +never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous +mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the +cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had L100,000, I'd +have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, +for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet; but we +ain't the boys. We don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see +_at all_ the policeman which is a going on his beat behind the bull's eye, +and no thanks to us. Still, _some_ somedever, it's in the fates, that +Association is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it +would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will; only don't you think me +a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch +myself and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks; and if you +were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me +cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye. + +"Now to business; I have had a sorter kinder sample day. Up at 5, to see a +dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who +came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from +5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony--insensible to me, but +not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at +8. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of +pressure of the brain--going any moment. Prayed the commendatory prayers +over him, and started for the river with West. Fished all the morning +in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful agonized face between me and +the river, pondering on THE mystery. Killed eight on 'March brown' and +'governor,' by drowning the flies, and taking _'em out gently to see_ if +ought was there--which is the only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The +water is warmer than the air--_ergo_, fishes don't like to put their noses +out o' doors, and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom. +The captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't going +to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds burn up at +1 P.M. I put on a minnow, and kill three more; I should have had lots, but +for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would 'walk the waters like +a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. Mem.--Never fish with the sun in +your back; it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow it's strichnine +and prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds--three +to the pound; not good, considering I had spased many a two-pound fish, I +_know_. + +"Corollary.--Brass minnow don't suit the water. Where is your wonderful +minnow? Send him me down, or else a _horn_ one, which I believes in +desperate; but send me something before Tuesday, and I will send you P.O.O. +Horn minnow looks like a gudgeon, which is the pure caseine. One pounder I +caught to-day on the 'March brown' womited his wittles, which was rude, but +instructive; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long and more. Blow +minnows--gudgeon is the thing. + +"Came off the water at 3. Found my man alive, and, thank God, quiet. Sat +with him, and thought him going once or twice. What a mystery that long, +insensible death-struggle is! Why should they be so long about it? Then had +to go Hartley Row for an Archdeacon's Sunday-school meeting--three hours +useless (I fear) speechifying and 'shop'; but the Archdeacon is a good +man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Got back at 10:30, and sit +writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of incongruous things to +do--and the very incongruity keeps one beany and jolly. Your letter was +delightful. I read part of it to West, who says, you are the best fellow on +earth, to which I agree. + +"So no more from your sleepy and tired--C. KINGSLEY." + +This was almost the last letter I ever received from him in the Parson Lot +period of his life, with which alone this notice has to do. It shows, I +think, very clearly that it was not that he had deserted his flag (as has +been said) or changed his mind about the cause for which he had fought so +hard and so well. His heart was in it still as warmly as ever, as he says +himself. But the battle had rolled away to another part of the field. +Almost all that Parson Lot had ever striven for was already gained. The +working-classes had already got statutory protection for their trade +associations, and their unions, though still outside the law, had become +strong enough to fight their own battles. And so he laid aside his fighting +name and his fighting pen, and had leisure to look calmly on the great +struggle more as a spectator than an actor. + +A few months later, in the summer of 1856, when he and I were talking +over and preparing for a week's fishing in the streams and lakes of his +favourite Snowdonia, he spoke long and earnestly in the same key. I well +remember how he wound it all up with, "the long and short of it is, I am +becoming an optimist. All men, worth anything, old men especially, have +strong fits of optimism--even Carlyle has--because they can't help hoping, +and sometimes feeling, that the world is going right, and will go right, +not your way, or my way, but its own way. Yes; we've all tried our +Holloway's Pills, Tom, to cure all the ills of all the world--and we've +all found out I hope by this time that the tough old world has more in +its inside than any Holloway's Pills will clear out." A few weeks later I +received the following invitation to Snowdon, and to Snowdon we went in the +autumn of 1856. + +THE INVITATION. + + Come away with me, Tom, + Term and talk is done; + My poor lads are reaping, + Busy every one. + Curates mind the parish, + Sweepers mind the Court, + We'll away to Snowdon + For our ten days' sport, + Fish the August evening + Till the eve is past, + Whoop like boys at pounders + Fairly played and grassed. + When they cease to dimple, + Lunge, and swerve, and leap, + Then up over Siabod + Choose our nest, and sleep. + Up a thousand feet, Tom, + Round the lion's head, + Find soft stones to leeward + And make up our bed. + Bat our bread and bacon, + Smoke the pipe of peace, + And, ere we be drowsy, + Give our boots a grease. + Homer's heroes did so, + Why not such as we? + What are sheets and servants? + Superfluity. + Pray for wives and children + Safe in slumber curled, + Then to chat till midnight + O'er this babbling world. + Of the workmen's college, + Of the price of grain, + Of the tree of knowledge, + Of the chance of rain; + If Sir A. goes Romeward, + If Miss B. sings true, + If the fleet comes homeward, + If the mare will do,-- + Anything and everything-- + Up there in the sky + Angels understand us, + And no "_saints_" are by. + Down, and bathe at day-dawn, + Tramp from lake to lake, + Washing brain and heart clean + Every step we take. + Leave to Robert Browning + Beggars, fleas, and vines; + Leave to mournful Ruskin + Popish Apennines, + Dirty Stones of Venice + And his Gas-lamps Seven; + We've the stones of Snowdon + And the lamps of heaven. + Where's the mighty credit + In admiring Alps? + Any goose sees "glory" + In their "snowy scalps." + Leave such signs and wonders + For the dullard brain, + As aesthetic brandy, + Opium, and cayenne; + Give me Bramshill common + (St. John's harriers by), + Or the vale of Windsor, + England's golden eye. + Show me life and progress, + Beauty, health, and man; + Houses fair, trim gardens, + Turn where'er I can. + Or, if bored with "High Art," + And such popish stuff, + One's poor ears need airing, + Snowdon's high enough. + While we find God's signet + Fresh on English ground, + Why go gallivanting + With the nations round? + Though we try no ventures + Desperate or strange; + Feed on common-places + In a narrow range; + Never sought for Franklin + Round the frozen Capes; + Even, with Macdougall, + Bagged our brace of apes; + Never had our chance, Tom, + In that black Redan; + Can't avenge poor Brereton + Out in Sakarran; + Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, + By the dirty pen, + What we can we will be, + Honest Englishmen. + Do the work that's nearest, + Though it's dull at whiles; + Helping, when we meet them + Lame dogs over stiles; + See in every hedgerow + Marks of angels' feet, + Epics in each pebble + Underneath our feet; + Once a-year, like schoolboys, + Robin-Hooding go. + Leaving fops and fogies + A thousand feet below. + +T. H. + + + + +CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY. + + +King Ryence, says the legend of Prince Arthur, wore a paletot trimmed with +kings' beards. In the first French Revolution (so Carlyle assures us) +there were at Meudon tanneries of human skins. Mammon, at once tyrant and +revolutionary, follows both these noble examples--in a more respectable +way, doubtless, for Mammon hates cruelty; bodily pain is his devil--the +worst evil of which he, in his effeminacy, can conceive. So he shrieks +benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged; but he trims his +paletots, and adorns his legs, with the flesh of men and the skins of +women, with degradation, pestilence, heathendom, and despair; and then +chuckles self-complacently over the smallness of his tailors' bills. +Hypocrite!--straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What is flogging, +or hanging, King Ryence's paletot, or the tanneries of Meudon, to the +slavery, starvation, waste of life, year-long imprisonment in dungeons +narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition, which goes on among +thousands of free English clothes-makers at this day? + +"The man is mad," says Mammon, smiling supercilious pity. Yes, Mammon; mad +as Paul before Festus; and for much the same reason, too. Much learning has +made us mad. From two articles in the "Morning Chronicle" of Friday, Dec. +14th, and Tuesday, Dec. 18th, on the Condition of the Working Tailors, +we learnt too much to leave us altogether masters of ourselves. But there +is method in our madness; we can give reasons for it--satisfactory to +ourselves, perhaps also to Him who made us, and you, and all tailors +likewise. Will you, freshly bedizened, you and your footmen, from +Nebuchadnezzar and Co.'s "Emporium of Fashion," hear a little about how +your finery is made? You are always calling out for facts, and have a firm +belief in salvation by statistics. Listen to a few. + +The Metropolitan Commissioner of the "Morning Chronicle" called two +meetings of the Working Tailors, one in Shad well, and the other at the +Hanover Square Rooms, in order to ascertain their condition from their +own lips. Both meetings were crowded. At the Hanover Square Rooms there +were more than one thousand men; they were altogether unanimous in their +descriptions of the misery and slavery which they endured. It appears +that there are two distinct tailor trades--the "honourable" trade, now +almost confined to the West End, and rapidly dying out there, and the +"dishonourable" trade of the show-shops and slop-shops--the plate-glass +palaces, where gents--and, alas! those who would be indignant at that +name--buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors' +own slang; slang is true and expressive enough, though, now and then. The +honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four +hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all +its own way. The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of +one hundred and fifty journeymen per year; the dishonourable increasing at +such a rate that, in twenty years it will have absorbed the whole tailoring +trade, which employs upwards of twenty-one thousand journeymen. At the +honourable shops the work is done, as it was universally thirty years ago, +on the premises and at good wages. In the dishonourable trade, the work is +taken home by the men, to be done at the very lowest possible prices, which +decrease year by year, almost month by month. At the honourable shops, from +36s. to 24s. is paid for a piece of work for which the dishonourable shop +pays from 22s. to 9s. But not to the workmen; happy is he if he really +gets two-thirds, or half of that. For at the honourable shops, the master +deals directly with his workmen; while at the dishonourable ones, the +greater part of the work, if not the whole, is let out to contractors, or +middle-men--"_sweaters_," as their victims significantly call them--who, in +their turn, let it out again, sometimes to the workmen, sometimes to fresh +middlemen; so that out of the price paid for labour on each article, not +only the workmen, but the sweater, and perhaps the sweater's sweater, and a +third, and a fourth, and a fifth, have to draw their profit. And when the +labour price has been already beaten down to the lowest possible, how much +remains for the workmen after all these deductions, let the poor fellows +themselves say! + +One working tailor (at the Hanover Square Rooms Meeting) "mentioned a +number of shops, both at the east and west ends, whose work was all +taken by sweaters; and several of these shops were under royal and noble +patronage. There was one notorious sweater who kept his carriage. He was a +Jew, and, of course, he gave a preference to his own sect. Thus, another +Jew received it from him second hand and at a lower rate; then it went to a +third-till it came to the unfortunate Christian at perhaps the eighth rate, +and he performed the work at barely living prices; this same Jew required a +deposit of 5_l_. in money before he would give out a single garment to be +made. He need not describe the misery which this system entailed upon the +workmen. It was well known, but it was almost impossible, except for those +who had been at the two, to form an idea of the difference between the +present meeting and one at the East-end, where all who attended worked for +slop-shops and sweaters. The present was a highly respectable assembly; the +other presented no other appearance but those of misery and degradation." + +Another says--"We have all worked in the honourable trade, so we know the +regular prices from our own personal experience. Taking the bad work with +the good work we might earn 11s. a week upon an average. Sometimes we do +earn as much as 15s.; but, to do this, we are obliged to take part of our +work home to our wives and daughters. We are not always fully employed. We +are nearly half our time idle. Hence, our earnings are, upon an average +throughout the year, not more than 5s. 6d. a week." "Very often I have made +only 3s. 4d. in the week," said one. "That's common enough with us all, I +can assure you," said another. "Last week my wages was 7s. 6d.," declared +one. "I earned 6s. 4d.," exclaimed the second. "My wages came to 9s. 2d. +The week before I got 6s. 3d." "I made 7s. 9d.," and "I 7s. or 8s., I can't +exactly remember which." "This is what we term the best part of our winter +season. The reason why we are so long idle is because more hands than +are wanted are kept on the premises, so that in case of a press of work +coming in, our employers can have it done immediately. Under the day work +system no master tailor had more men on the premises than he could keep +continually going; but since the change to the piecework system, masters +made a practice of engaging double the quantity of hands that they +have any need for, so that an order may be executed 'at the shortest +possible notice,' if requisite. A man must not leave the premises when, +unemployed,--if he does, he loses his chance of work coming in. I have been +there four days together, and had not a stitch of work to do." "Yes; that +is common enough." "Ay, and then you're told, if you complain, you can go, +if you don't like it. I am sure twelve hands would do all they have done at +home, and yet they keep forty of us. It's generally remarked that, however +strong and healthy a man may be when he goes to work at that shop, in a +month's time he'll be a complete shadow, and have almost all his clothes in +pawn. By Sunday morning, he has no money at all left, and he has to subsist +till the following Saturday upon about a pint of weak tea, and four slices +of bread and butter per day!!!" + +"Another of the reasons for the sweaters keeping more hands than they want +is, the men generally have their meals with them. The more men they have +with them the more breakfasts and teas they supply, and the more profit +they make. The men usually have to pay 4d., and very often, 5d. for their +breakfast, and the same for their tea. The tea or breakfast is mostly a +pint of tea or coffee, and three to four slices of bread and butter. _I +worked for one sweater who almost starved the men; the smallest eater there +would not have had enough if he had got three times as much. They had only +three thin slices of bread and butter, not sufficient for a child, and the +tea was both weak and bad. The whole meal could not have stood him in 2d. +a head, and what made it worse was, that the men who worked there couldn't +afford to have dinners, so that they were starved to the bone._ The +sweater's men generally lodge where they work. A sweater usually keeps +about six men. These occupy two small garrets; one room is called the +kitchen, and the other the workshop; and here the whole of the six men, and +the sweater, his wife, and family, live and sleep. One sweater _I worked +with had four children and six men, and they, together with his wife, +sister-in-law, and himself, all lived in two rooms, the largest of which +was about eight feet by ten. We worked in the smallest room and slept there +as well--all six of us. There were two turnup beds in it, and we slept +three in a bed. There was no chimney, and, indeed, no ventilation whatever. +I was near losing my life there--the foul air of so many people working +all day in the place, and sleeping there at night, was quite suffocating. +Almost all the men were consumptive, and I myself attended the dispensary +for disease of the lungs. The room in which we all slept was not more than +six feet square. We were all sick and weak, and both to work._ Each of the +six of us paid 2s. 6d. a week for our lodging, or 15s. altogether, and I +am sure such a room as we slept and worked in might be had for 1s. a week; +you can get a room with a fire-place for 1s. 6d. a week. The usual sum that +the men working for sweaters pay for their tea, breakfasts, and lodging +is 6s. 6d. to 7s. a week, and they seldom earn more money in the week. +Occasionally at the week's end they are in debt to the sweater. This is +seldom for more than 6d., for the sweater will not give them victuals if +he has no work for them to do. Many who live and work at the sweater's are +married men, and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings +by themselves. Some send them to the workhouse, others to their friends +in the country. Besides the profit of the board and lodging, the sweater +takes 6d. out of the price paid for every garment under 10s.; some take +1s., and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s. This man works for a +large show-shop at the West End. The usual profit of the sweater, over and +above the board and lodging, is 2s. out of every pound. Those who work +for sweaters soon lose their clothes, and are unable to seek for other +work, because they have not a coat to their back to go and seek it in. +_Last week, I worked with another man at a coat for one of her Majesty's +ministers, and my partner never broke his fast while he was making his half +of it._ The minister dealt at a cheap West End show-shop. All the workman +had the whole day-and-a-half he was making the coat was a little tea. But +sweaters' work is not so bad as government work after all. At that, we +cannot make more than 4s. or 5s. a week altogether--that is, counting the +time we are running after it, of course. _Government contract work is the +worst of all, and the starved-out and sweated-out tailor's last resource._ +But still, government does not do the regular trade so much harm as the +cheap show and slop shops. These houses have ruined thousands. They have +cut down the prices, so that men cannot live at the work; and the masters +who did and would pay better wages, are reducing the workmen's pay every +day. They say they must either compete with the large show shops or go into +the 'Gazette.'" + +Sweet competition! Heavenly maid!--Now-a-days hymned alike by +penny-a-liners and philosophers as the ground of all society--the only +real preserver of the earth! Why not of Heaven, too? Perhaps there is +competition among the angels, and Gabriel and Raphael have won their rank +by doing the maximum of worship on the minimum of grace? We shall know some +day. In the meanwhile, "these are thy works, thou parent of all good!" +Man eating man, eaten by man, in every variety of degree and method! Why +does not some enthusiastic political economist write an epic on "The +Consecration of Cannibalism"? + +But if any one finds it pleasant to his soul to believe the poor +journeymen's statements exaggerated, let him listen to one of the sweaters +themselves:-- + +"I wish," says he, "that others did for the men as decently as I do. I +know there are many who are living entirely upon them. Some employ as many +as fourteen men. I myself worked in the house of a man who did this. The +chief part of us lived, and worked, and slept together in two rooms, on the +second floor. They charged 2s. 6d. per head for the lodging alone. Twelve +of the workmen, I am sure, lodged in the house, and these paid altogether +30s. a week rent to the sweater. I should think the sweater paid 8s. a week +for the rooms--so that he gained at least 22s. clear out of the lodging +of these men, and stood at no rent himself. For the living of the men he +charged--5d. for breakfasts, and the same for teas, and 8d. for dinner--or +at the rate of 10s. 6d. each per head. Taking one with the other, and +considering the manner in which they lived, I am certain that the cost for +keeping each of them could not have been more than 5s. This would leave 5s. +6d. clear profit on the board of each of the twelve men, or, altogether, +L3, 6s. per week; and this, added to the L1, 2s. profit on the rent, would +give L4, 8s. for the sweater's gross profit on the board and lodging of +the workmen in his place. But, besides this, he got 1s. out of each coat +made on his premises, and there were twenty-one coats made there, upon an +average, every week; so that, altogether, the sweater's clear gains out of +the men were L5, 9s. every week. Each man made about a coat and a half in +the course of the seven days (_for they all worked on a Sunday--they were +generally told to 'borrow a day off the Lord_.') For this coat and a half +each hand got L1, 2s. 6d., and out of it he had to pay 13s. for board and +lodging; so that there was 9s. 6d. clear left. These are the profits of the +sweater, and the earnings of the men engaged under him, when working for +the first rate houses. But many of the cheap houses pay as low as 8s. for +the making of each dress and frock coat, and some of them as low as 6s. +Hence the earnings of the men at such work would be from 9s. to 12s. per +week, and the cost of their board and lodging without dinners, for these +they seldom have, would be from 7s. 6d. to 8s. per week. Indeed, the men +working under sweaters at such prices generally consider themselves well +off if they have a shilling or two in their pockets for Sunday. The profits +of the sweater, however, would be from L4 to L5 out of twelve men, working +on his premises. The usual number of men working under each sweater is +about six individuals; and the average rate of profit, about L2, 10s., +without the sweater doing any work himself. It is very often the case that +a man working under a sweater is obliged to pawn his own coat to get any +pocket-money that he may require. Over and over again the sweater makes out +that he is in his debt from 1s. to 2s. at the end of the week, and when +the man's coat is in pledge, he is compelled to remain imprisoned in the +sweater's lodgings for months together. In some sweating places, there is +an old coat kept called a "reliever," and this is borrowed by such men as +have none of their own to go out in. There are very few of the sweaters' +men who have a coat to their backs or a shoe to their feet to come out into +the streets on Sunday. Down about Fulwood's Rents, Holborn, I am sure I +would not give 6d. for the clothes that are on a dozen of them; and it is +surprising to me, working and living together in such numbers and in such +small close rooms, in narrow close back courts as they do, that they are +not all swept off by some pestilence. I myself have seen half-a-dozen men +at work in a room that was a little better than a bedstead long. It was as +much as one could do to move between the wall and the bedstead when it was +down. There were two bedsteads in this room, and they nearly filled the +place when they were down. The ceiling was so low, that I couldn't stand +upright in the room. There was no ventilation in the place. There was no +fireplace, and only a small window. When the window was open, you could +nearly touch the houses at the back, and if the room had not been at the +top of the house, the men could not have seen at all in the place. The +staircase was so narrow, steep, and dark, that it was difficult to grope +your way to the top of the house--it was like going up a steeple. This is +the usual kind of place in which the sweater's men are lodged. The reason +why there are so many Irishmen working for the sweaters is, because they +are seduced over to this country by the prospect of high wages and plenty +of work. They are brought over by the Cork boats at 10s. a-head, and when +they once get here, the prices they receive are so small, that they are +unable to go back. In less than a week after they get here, their clothes +are all pledged, and they are obliged to continue working under the +sweaters. + +"The extent to which this system of 'street kidnapping' is carried on +is frightful. Young tailors, fresh from the country, are decoyed by the +sweaters' wives into their miserable dens, under extravagant promises of +employment, to find themselves deceived, imprisoned, and starved, often +unable to make their escape for months--perhaps years; and then only +fleeing from one dungeon to another as abominable." + +In the meantime, the profits of the beasts of prey who live on these poor +fellows--both masters and sweaters--seem as prodigious as their cruelty. + +Hear another working tailor on this point:--"In 1844, I belonged to the +honourable part of the trade. Our house of call supplied the present +show-shop with men to work on the premises. The prices then paid were at +the rate of 6d. per hour. For the same driving capes that they paid 18s. +then, they give only 12s. for now. For the dress and frock coats they gave +15s. then, and now they are 14s. The paletots and shooting coats were 12s.; +there was no coat made on the premises under that sum. At the end of the +season, they wanted to reduce the paletots to 9s. The men refused to make +them at that price, when other houses were paying as much as 15s. for them. +The consequence of this was, the house discharged all the men, and got a +Jew middle-man from the neighbourhood of Petticoat-lane, to agree to do +them all at 7s. 6d. a piece. The Jew employed all the poor people who were +at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity. This +Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week. The Jew gets 2s. 6d. profit +out of each, and having no sewing trimmings allowed to him, he makes the +work-people find them. The saving in trimmings alone to the firm, since +the workmen left the premises, must have realized a small fortune to them. +Calculating men, women, and children, I have heard it said that the cheap +house at the West End employs 1,000 hands. The trimmings for the work done +by these would be about 6d. a week per head, so that the saving to the +house since the men worked on the premises has been no less than L1,300 +a year, and all this taken out of the pockets of the poor. The Jew who +contracts for making the paletots is no tailor at all. A few years ago he +sold sponges in the street, and now he rides in his carriage. The Jew's +profits are 500 half-crowns, or L60 odd, per week--that is upwards of +L3,000 a-year. Women are mostly engaged at the paletot work. When I came to +work for the cheap show-shop I had L5, 10s. in the saving bank; now I have +not a half-penny in it. All I had saved went little by little to keep me +and my family. I have always made a point of putting some money by when I +could afford it, but since I have been at this work it has been as much as +I could do to _live_, much more to _save_. One of the firm for which I work +has been heard publicly to declare that he employed 1,000 hands constantly. +Now the earnings of these at the honourable part of the trade would be upon +an average, taking the skilful with the unskilful, 15s. a week each, or +L39,000 a year. But since they discharged the men from off their premises, +they have cut down the wages of the workmen one-half--taking one garment +with another--_though the selling prices remain the same to the public_, so +that they have saved by the reduction of the workmen's wages no less than +L19,500 per year. Every other quarter of a year something has been 'docked' +off our earnings, until it is almost impossible for men with families to +live decently by their labour; and now, for the first time, they pretend +to feel for them. They even talk of erecting a school for the children of +their workpeople; but where is the use of erecting schools, when they know +as well as we do, that at the wages they pay, the children must be working +for their fathers at home? They had much better erect workshops, and employ +the men on the premises at fair living wages, and then the men could +educate their own children, without being indebted to their charity." + +On this last question of what the master-cannibals had "much better do," we +have somewhat to say presently. In the meantime, hear another of the things +which they had much better _not_ do. "Part of the fraud and deception of +the slop trade consists in the mode in which the public are made believe +that the men working for such establishments earn more money than they +really do. The plan practised is similar to that adopted by the army +clothier, who made out that the men working on his establishment made per +week from 15s. to 17s. each, whereas, on inquiry, it was found that a +considerable sum was paid out of that to those who helped to do the looping +for those who took it home. When a coat is given to me to make, a ticket is +handed to me with the garment, similar to this one which I have obtained +from a friend of mine. + + +--------------------------------------------+ + | 448 | + | Mr. _Smith_ 6,675 Made by _M_ | + | _Ze_ = 12s. = _lined lustre | + | quilted double stitched | + | each side seams_ | + | | + | 448. No. 6,675. | + | o'clock _Friday_ | + | | + | Mr. _Smith_ | + +--------------------------------------------+ + +On this you see the price is marked at 12s.," continued my informant, "and +supposing that I, with two others, could make three of these garments in +the week, the sum of thirty-six shillings would stand in the books of the +establishment as the amount earned by me in that space of time. This would +be sure to be exhibited to the customers, immediately that there was the +least outcry made about the starvation price they paid for their work, as +a proof that the workpeople engaged on their establishment received the +full prices; whereas, of that 36s. entered against my name, _I should have +had to pay 24s. to those who assisted me_; besides this, my share of the +trimmings and expenses would have been 1s. 6d., and probably my share of +the fires would be 1s. more; so that the real fact would be, that I should +make 9s. 6d. clear, and this it would be almost impossible to do, if I did +not work long over hours. I am obliged to keep my wife continually at work +helping me, in order to live." + +In short, the condition of these men is far worse than that of the wretched +labourers of Wilts or Dorset. Their earnings are as low and often lower; +their trade requires a far longer instruction, far greater skill and +shrewdness; their rent and food are more expensive; and their hours of +work, while they have work, more than half as long again. Conceive sixteen +or eighteen hours of skilled labour in a stifling and fetid chamber, +earning not much more than 6s. 6d. or 7s. a week! And, as has been already +mentioned in one case, the man who will earn even that, must work all +Sunday. He is even liable to be thrown out of his work for refusing to work +on Sunday. Why not? Is there anything about one idle day in seven to be +found among the traditions of Mammon? When the demand comes, the supply +must come; and will, in spite of foolish auld-warld notion about keeping +days holy--or keeping contracts holy either, for, indeed, Mammon has no +conscience--right and wrong are not words expressible by any commercial +laws yet in vogue; and therefore it appears that to earn this wretched +pittance is by no means to get it. "For," says one, and the practice is +asserted to be general, almost universal, "there is at our establishment a +mode of reducing the price of our labour even lower than we have mentioned. +The prices we have stated are those _nominally_ paid for making the +garments; but it is not an uncommon thing in our shop for a man to make a +garment, and receive nothing at all for it. I remember a man once having a +waistcoat to do, the price of making which was 2s., and when he gave the +job in he was told that he owed the establishment 6d. The manner in which +this is brought about is by a system of fines. We are fined if we are +behind time with our job, 6d. the first hour, and 3d. for each hour that we +are late." "I have known as much as 7s. 6d. to be deducted off the price of +a coat on the score of want of punctuality," one said; "and, indeed, very +often the whole money is stopped. It would appear, as if our employers +themselves strove to make us late with our work, and so have an opportunity +of cutting down the price paid for our labour. They frequently put off +giving out the trimmings to us till the time at which the coat is due has +expired. If to the trimmer we return an answer that is considered 'saucy,' +we are find 6d. or 1s., according to the trimmer's temper." "I was called a +thief," another of the three declared, "and because I told the man I would +not submit to such language, I was fined 6d. These are the principal of +the in-door fines. The out-door fines are still more iniquitous. There are +full a dozen more fines for minor offences; indeed, we are fined upon every +petty pretext. We never know what we have to take on a Saturday, for the +meanest advantages are taken to reduce our wages. If we object to pay these +fines, we are told that we may leave; but they know full well that we are +afraid to throw ourselves out of work." + +Folks are getting somewhat tired of the old rodomontade that a slave is +free the moment he sets foot on British soil! Stuff!--are these tailors +free? Put any conceivable sense you will on the word, and then say--are +they free? We have, thank God, emancipated the black slaves; it would seem +a not inconsistent sequel to that act to set about emancipating these +white ones. Oh! we forgot; there is an infinite difference between the two +cases--the black slaves worked for our colonies; the white slaves work for +_us_. But, indeed, if, as some preach, self-interest is the mainspring +of all human action, it is difficult to see who will step forward to +emancipate the said white slaves; for all classes seem to consider it +equally their interest to keep them as they are; all classes, though by +their own confession they are ashamed, are yet not afraid to profit by the +system which keeps them down. + +Not only the master tailors and their underlings, but the retail tradesmen, +too, make their profit out of these abominations. By a method which smacks +at first sight somewhat of benevolence, but proves itself in practice to be +one of those "precious balms which break," not "the head" (for that would +savour of violence, and might possibly give some bodily pain, a thing +intolerable to the nerves of Mammon) but the heart--an organ which, being +spiritual, can of course be recognized by no laws of police or commerce. +The object of the State, we are told, is "the conservation of body and +goods"; there is nothing in that about broken hearts; nothing which should +make it a duty to forbid such a system as a working-tailor here describes-- + +"Fifteen or twenty years ago, such a thing as a journeyman tailor having +to give security before he could get work was unknown; but now I and such +as myself could not get a stitch to do first handed, if we did not either +procure the security of some householder, or deposit L5 in the hands of the +employer. The reason of this is, the journeymen are so badly paid, that the +employers know they can barely live on what they get, and consequently they +are often driven to pawn the garments given out to them, in order to save +themselves and their families from starving. If the journeyman can manage +to scrape together L5, he has to leave it in the hands of his employer all +the time that he is working for the house. I know one person who gives out +the work for a fashionable West End slop-shop that will not take household +security, and requires L5 from each hand. I am informed by one of the +parties who worked for this man that he has as many as 150 hands in +his employ, and that each of these has placed L5 in his hands, so that +altogether the poor people have handed over L750 to increase the capital +upon which he trades, and for which he pays no interest whatsoever." + +This recalls a similar case (mentioned by a poor stay-stitcher in another +letter, published in the "Morning Chronicle"), of a large wholesale +staymaker in the City, who had amassed a large fortune by beginning to +trade upon the 5s. which he demanded to be left in his hands by his +workpeople before he gave them employment. + +"Two or three years back one of the slopsellers at the East End became +bankrupt, and the poor people lost all the money that had been deposited +as security for work in his hands. The journeymen who get the security +of householders are enabled to do so by a system which is now in general +practice at the East End. Several bakers, publicans, chandler-shop keepers, +and coal-shed keepers, make a trade of becoming security for those seeking +slop-work. They consent to be responsible for the workpeople upon the +condition of the men dealing at their shops. The workpeople who require +such security are generally very good customers, from the fact of their +either having large families, all engaged in the same work, or else several +females or males working under them, and living at their house. The parties +becoming securities thus not only greatly increase their trade, but furnish +a second-rate article at a first-rate price. It is useless to complain of +the bad quality or high price of the articles supplied by the securities, +for the shopkeepers know, as well as the workpeople, that it is impossible +for the hands to leave them without losing their work. I know one baker +whose security was refused at the slop-shop because he was already +responsible for so many, and he begged the publican to be his deputy, so +that by this means the workpeople were obliged to deal at both baker's +and publican's too. I never heard of a butcher making a trade of becoming +security, _because the slopwork people cannot afford to consume much meat_. + +"The same system is also pursued by lodging-house keepers. They will become +responsible if the workmen requiring security will undertake to lodge at +their house." + +But of course the men most interested in keeping up the system are those +who buy the clothes of these cheap shops. And who are they? Not merely +the blackguard gent--the butt of Albert Smith and Punch, who flaunts at +the Casinos and Cremorne Gardens in vulgar finery wrung out of the souls +and bodies of the poor; not merely the poor lawyer's clerk or reduced +half-pay officer who has to struggle to look as respectable as his class +commands him to look on a pittance often no larger than that of the day +labourer--no, strange to say--and yet not strange, considering our modern +eleventh commandment--"Buy cheap and sell dear," the richest as well as the +poorest imitate the example of King Ryence and the tanners of Meudon, At +a great show establishment--to take one instance out of many--the very +one where, as we heard just now, "however strong and healthy a man may be +when he goes to work at that shop, in a month's time he will be a complete +shadow, and have almost all his clothes in pawn"-- + +"We have also made garments for Sir ---- ----, Sir ---- ----, Alderman +----, Dr. ----, and Dr. ----. We make for several of the aristocracy. We +cannot say whom, because the tickets frequently come to us as Lord ---- and +the Marquis of ----. This could not be a Jew's trick, because the buttons +on the liveries had coronets upon them. And again, we know the house is +patronized largely by the aristocracy, clergy, and gentry, by the number of +court-suits and liveries, surplices, regimentals, and ladies' riding-habits +that we continually have to make up. _There are more clergymen among the +customers than any other class, and often we have to work at home upon +the Sunday at their clothes, in order to get a living._ The customers are +mostly ashamed of dealing at this house, for the men who take the clothes +to the customers' houses in the cart have directions to pull up at the +corner of the street. We had a good proof of the dislike of gentlefolks to +have it known that they dealt at that shop for their clothes, for when the +trousers buttons were stamped with the name of the firm, we used to have +the garments returned, daily, to have other buttons put on them, and now +the buttons are unstamped"!!! + +We shall make no comment on this extract. It needs none. If these men know +how their clothes are made, they are past contempt. Afraid of man, and not +afraid of God! As if His eye could not see the cart laden with the plunder +of the poor, because it stopped round the corner! If, on the other hand, +they do _not_ know these things, and doubtless the majority do not,--it is +their sin that they do not know it. Woe to a society whose only apology to +God and man is, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Men ought to know the condition +of those by whose labour they live. Had the question been the investment +of a few pounds in a speculation, these gentlemen would have been careful +enough about good security. Ought they to take no security when they invest +their money in clothes, that they are not putting on their backs accursed +garments, offered in sacrifice to devils, reeking with the sighs of the +starving, tainted--yes, tainted, indeed, for it comes out now that diseases +numberless are carried home in these same garments from the miserable +abodes where they are made. Evidence to this effect was given in 1844; but +Mammon was too busy to attend to it. These wretched creatures, when they +have pawned their own clothes and bedding, will use as substitutes the +very garments they are making. So Lord ----'s coat has been seen covering +a group of children blotched with small-pox. The Rev. D---- finds himself +suddenly unpresentable from a cutaneous disease, which it is not polite to +mention on the south of Tweed, little dreaming that the shivering dirty +being who made his coat has been sitting with his arms in the sleeves for +warmth while he stitched at the tails. The charming Miss C---- is swept off +by typhus or scarlatina, and her parents talk about "God's heavy judgment +and visitation"--had they tracked the girl's new riding-habit back to the +stifling undrained hovel where it served as a blanket to the fever-stricken +slopworker, they would have seen _why_ God had visited them, seen that His +judgments are true judgments, and give His plain opinion of the system +which "speaketh good of the covetous whom God abhorreth"--a system, to +use the words of the "Morning Chronicle's" correspondent, "unheard of +and unparalleled in the history of any country--a scheme so deeply laid +for the introduction and supply of under-paid labour to the market, that +it is impossible for the working man not to sink and be degraded, by it +into the lowest depths of wretchedness and infamy--a system which is +steadily and gradually increasing, and sucking more and more victims out +of the honourable trade, who are really intelligent artizans, living in +comparative comfort and civilization, into the dishonourable or sweating +trade in which the slopworkers are generally almost brutified by their +incessant toil, wretched pay, miserable food, and filthy homes." + +But to us, almost the worse feature in the whole matter is, that the +government are not merely parties to, but actually the originators of this +system. The contract system, as a working tailor stated, in the name of the +rest, "had been mainly instrumental in destroying the living wages of the +working man. Now, the government were the sole originators of the system +of contracts and of sweating. Forty years ago, there was nothing known of +contracts, except government contracts; and at that period the contractors +were confined to making slops for the navy, the army, and the West India +slaves. It was never dreamt of then that such a system was to come +into operation in the better classes of trade, till ultimately it was +destructive of masters as well as men. The government having been the cause +of the contract system, and consequently of the sweating system, he called +upon them to abandon it. The sweating system had established the show shops +and the ticket system, both of which were countenanced by the government, +till it had become a fashion to support them. + +"Even the court assisted to keep the system in fashion, and the royal arms +and royal warrants were now exhibited common enough by slopsellers." + +Government said its duty was to do justice. But was it consistent with +justice to pay only 2s. 6d. for making navy jackets, which would be paid +10s. for by every 'honourable' tradesman? Was it consistent with justice +for the government to pay for Royal Marine clothing (private's coat and +epaulettes) 1s. 9d.? Was it consistent with justice for the government to +pay for making a pair of trousers (four or five hours' work) only 2-1/2d? +And yet, when a contractor, noted for paying just wages to those he +employed, brought this under the consideration of the Admiralty, they +declared they had nothing to do with it. Here is their answer:-- + +"Admiralty, March 19, 1847. + +"Sir,--Having laid before my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, your +letter of the 8th inst., calling their attention to the extremely low +prices paid for making up articles of clothing, provided for Her Majesty's +naval service, I am commanded by their lordships to acquaint you, that +they have no control whatever over the wages paid for making up contract +clothing. Their duty is to take care that the articles supplied are of good +quality, and well made: the cost of the material and the workmanship are +matters which rest with the contractor; and if the public were to pay him a +higher price than that demanded, it would not ensure any advantage to the +men employed by him, as their wages depend upon the amount of competition +for employment amongst themselves. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, + +"H. G. WARD. + +"W. Shaw, Esq." + +Oh most impotent conclusion, however officially cautious, and +"philosophically" correct! Even if the wages did depend entirely on the +amount of competition, on whom does the amount of competition depend? +Merely on the gross numbers of the workmen? Somewhat, too, one would think, +on the system according to which the labour and the wages are distributed. +But right or wrong, is it not a pleasant answer for the poor working +tailors, and one likely to increase their faith, hope, and charity towards +the present commercial system, and those who deny the possibility of any +other? + +"The government," says another tailor at the same meeting, "had really been +the means of reducing prices in the tailoring trade to so low a scale that +no human being, whatever his industry, could live and be happy in his lot. +The government were really responsible for the first introduction of female +labour. He would clearly prove what he had stated. He would refer first +to the army clothing. Our soldiers were comfortably clothed, as they had +a right to be; but surely the men who made the clothing which was so +comfortable, ought to be paid for their labour so as to be able to keep +themselves comfortable and their families virtuous. But it was in evidence, +that the persons working upon army clothing could not, upon an average, +earn more than 1s. a-day. Another government department, the post-office, +afforded a considerable amount of employment to tailors; but those who +worked upon the post-office clothing earned, at the most, only 1s. 6d. +a-day. The police clothing was another considerable branch of tailoring; +this, like the others, ought to be paid for at living prices; but the men +at work at it could only earn 1s. 6d. a-day, supposing them to work hard +all the time, fourteen or fifteen hours. The Custom House clothing gave +about the same prices. Now, all these sorts of work were performed by time +workers, who, as a natural consequence of the wages they received, were the +most miserable of human beings. Husband, wife, and family all worked at +it; they just tried to breathe upon it; to live it never could be called. +_Yet the same Government which paid such wretched wages, called upon the +wretched people to be industrious, to be virtuous, and happy_, How was +it possible, whatever their industry, to be virtuous and happy? The fact +was, the men who, at the slack season, had been compelled to fall back +upon these kinds of work, became so beggared and broken down by it, +notwithstanding the assistance of their wives and families, that they were +never able to rise out of it." + +And now comes the question--What is to be done with these poor tailors, to +the number of between fifteen and twenty thousand? Their condition, as it +stands, is simply one of ever-increasing darkness and despair. The system +which is ruining them is daily spreading, deepening. While we write, fresh +victims are being driven by penury into the slopworking trade, fresh +depreciations of labour are taking place. Like Ulysses' companions in +the cave of Polyphemus, the only question among them is, to scramble so +far back as to have _a chance of being eaten at last_. Before them is +ever-nearing slavery, disease, and starvation. What can be done? + +First--this can be done. That no man who calls himself a Christian--no +man who calls himself a man--shall ever disgrace himself by dealing at +any show-shop or slop-shop. It is easy enough to know them. The ticketed +garments, the impudent puffs; the trumpery decorations, proclaim +them,--every one knows them at first sight, He who pretends not to do so, +is simply either a fool or a liar. Let no man enter them--they are the +temples of Moloch--their thresholds are rank with human blood. God's curse +is on them, and on those who, by supporting them, are partakers of their +sins. Above all, let no clergyman deal at them. Poverty--and many clergymen +are poor--doubly poor, because society often requires them to keep up the +dress of gentlemen on the income of an artizan; because, too, the demands +on their charity are quadruple those of any other class--yet poverty is no +excuse. The thing is damnable--not Christianity only, but common humanity +cries out against it. Woe to those who dare to outrage in private the +principles which they preach in public! God is not mocked; and his curse +will find out the priest at the altar, as well as the nobleman in his +castle. + +But it is so hard to deprive the public of the luxury of cheap clothes! +Then let the public look out for some other means of procuring that +priceless blessing. If that, on experiment, be found impossible--if the +comfort of the few be for ever to be bought by the misery of the many--if +civilization is to benefit every one except the producing class--then this +world is truly the devil's world, and the sooner so ill-constructed and +infernal a machine is destroyed by that personage, the better. + +But let, secondly, a dozen, or fifty, or a hundred journeymen say to +one another: "It is competition that, is ruining us, and competition is +division, disunion, every man for himself, every man against his brother. +The remedy must be in association, co-operation, self-sacrifice for the +sake of one another. We can work together at the honourable tailor's +workshop--we can work and live together in the sweater's den for the +profit of our employers; why should we not work and live together in our +own workshops, or our own homes, for our own profit? The journeymen of +the honourable trade are just as much interested as the slopworkers in +putting down sweaters and slopsellers, since their numbers are constantly +decreasing, so that their turn must come some day. Let them, if no one else +does, lend money to allow us to set up a workshop of our own, a shop of our +own. If the money be not lent, still let us stint and strain ourselves to +the very bone, if it were only to raise one sweater's security-money, which +one of us should pay into the slopseller's hands, in his own name, but on +behalf of all: that will at least save one sweater's profit out of our +labour, and bestow it upon ourselves; and we will not spend that profit, +but hoard it, till we have squeezed out all the sweaters one by one. Then +we will open our common shop, and sell at as low a price as the cheapest +of the show shops. We _can_ do this,--by the abolition of sweaters' +profits,--by the using, as far as possible, of one set of fires, lights, +rooms, kitchens, and washhouses,--above all, by being true and faithful +to one another, as all partners should be. And, then, all that the master +slopsellers had better do, will be simply to vanish and become extinct." + +And again, let one man, or half-a-dozen men arise, who believe that the +world is not the devil's world at all, but God's: that the multitude of +the people is not, as Malthusians aver, the ruin, but as Solomon believed, +"the strength of the rulers"; that men are not meant to be beasts of prey, +eating one another up by competition, as in some confined pike pond, where +the great pike having despatched the little ones, begin to devour each +other, till one overgrown monster is left alone to die of starvation. Let a +few men who have money, and believe that, arise to play the man. + +Let them help and foster the growth of association by all means. Let them +advise the honourable tailors, while it is time, to save themselves from +being degraded into slopsellers by admitting their journeymen to a share in +profits. Let them encourage the journeymen to compete with Nebuchadnezzar & +Co. at their own game. Let them tell those journeymen that the experiment +is even now being tried, and, in many instances successfully, by no less +than one hundred and four associations of journeymen in Paris. Let them +remind them of that Great Name which the Parisian "ouvrier" so often +forgets--of Him whose everlasting Fatherhood is the sole ground of all +human brotherhood, whose wise and loving will is the sole source of all +perfect order and government. Let them, as soon as an association is +formed, provide for them a properly ventilated workshop, and let it out +to the associate tailors at a low, fair rent. I believe that they will +not lose by it--because it is right. God will take care of their money. +The world, it comes out now, is so well ordered by Him, that model +lodging-houses, public baths, wash-houses, insurance offices, all pay a +reasonable profit to those who invest money in them--perhaps associate +workshops may do the same. At all events, the owners of these show-shops +realize a far higher profit than need be, while the buildings required for +a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd +plate-glass fronts, and brass scroll-work chandeliers, and puffs, and paid +poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the +upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the +tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the +ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration +office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this +succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only +true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association +involves a saving both of labour and of capital. Why should it not succeed, +when every one connected with the establishment, landlords and workmen, +will have an interest in increasing its prosperity, and none whatever in +lowering the wages of any party employed? + +But above all, so soon as these men are found working together for common +profit, in the spirit of mutual self-sacrifice, let every gentleman and +every Christian, who has ever dealt with, or could ever have dealt with, +Nebuchadnezzar and Co., or their fellows, make it a point of honour and +conscience to deal with the associated workmen, and get others to do the +like. _It is by securing custom, far more than by gifts or loans of money, +that we can help the operatives._ We should but hang a useless burthen of +debt round their necks by advancing capital, without affording them the +means of disposing of their produce. + +Be assured, that the finding of a tailors' model lodging house, work rooms, +and shop, and the letting out of the two latter to an association, would +be a righteous act to do. If the plan does not pay, what then? only a part +of the money can be lost; and to have given that to an hospital or an +almshouse would have been called praiseworthy and Christian charity; how +much more to have spent it not in the cure, but in the prevention of +evil--in making almshouses less needful, and lessening the number of +candidates for the hospital! + +Regulations as to police order, and temperance, the workmen must, and, if +they are worthy of the name of free men, they can organize for themselves. +Let them remember that an association of labour is very different from +an association of capital. The capitalist only embarks his money on the +venture; the workman embarks his time--that is, much at least of his +life. Still more different is the operatives' association from the single +capitalist, seeking only to realize a rapid fortune, and then withdraw. The +association knows no withdrawal from business; it must grow in length and +in breadth, outlasting rival slopsellers, swallowing up all associations +similar to itself, and which might end by competing with it. "Monopoly!" +cries a free-trader, with hair on end. Not so, good friend; there will +be no real free trade without association. Who tells you that tailors' +associations are to be the only ones? + +Some such thing, as I have hinted, might surely be done. Where there is a +will there is a way. No doubt there are difficulties--Howard and Elizabeth +Fry, too, had their difficulties. Brindley and Brunel did not succeed at +the first trial. It is the sluggard only who is always crying, "There is a +lion in the streets." Be daring--trust in God, and He will fight for you; +man of money, whom these words have touched, godliness has the promise +of this life, as well as of that to come. The thing must be done, and +speedily; for if it be not done by fair means, it will surely do itself +by foul. The continual struggle of competition, not only in the tailors' +trade, but in every one which is not, like the navigator's or engineer's, +at a premium from its novel and extraordinary demand, will weaken and +undermine more and more the masters, who are already many of them +speculating on borrowed capital, while it will depress the workmen to a +point at which life will become utterly intolerable; increasing education +will serve only to make them the more conscious of their own misery; the +boiler will be strained to bursting pitch, till some jar, some slight +crisis, suddenly directs the imprisoned forces to one point, and then-- + +What then? + +Look at France, and see. + +PARSON LOT. + + + + +PREFACE + +_To the UNDERGRADUATES of CAMBRIDGE._ + + +I have addressed this preface to the young gentlemen of the University, +first, because it is my duty to teach such of them as will hear me, Modern +History; and I know no more important part of Modern History than the +condition and the opinions of our own fellow-countrymen, some of which are +set forth in this book. + +Next, I have addressed them now, because I know that many of them, at +various times, have taken umbrage at certain scenes of Cambridge life drawn +in this book. I do not blame them for having done so. On the contrary, I +have so far acknowledged the justice of their censure, that while I have +altered hardly one other word in this book, I have re-written all that +relates to Cambridge life. + +Those sketches were drawn from my own recollections of 1838-1842. Whether +they were overdrawn is a question between me and men of my own standing. + +But the book was published in 1849; and I am assured by men in whom I have +the most thorough confidence, that my sketches had by then at least become +exaggerated and exceptional, and therefore, as a whole, untrue; that a +process of purification was going on rapidly in the University; and that I +must alter my words if I meant to give the working men a just picture of +her. + +Circumstances took the property and control of the book out of my hand, and +I had no opportunity of reconsidering and of altering the passages. Those +circumstances have ceased, and I take the first opportunity of altering all +which my friends tell me should be altered. + +But even if, as early as 1849, I had not been told that I must do so, I +should have done so of my own accord, after the experiences of 1861. I have +received at Cambridge a courtesy and kindness from my elders, a cordial +welcome from my co-equals, and an earnest attention from the undergraduates +with whom I have come in contact, which would bind me in honour to say +nothing publicly against my University, even if I had aught to say. But I +have nought. I see at Cambridge nothing which does not gain my respect for +her present state and hope for her future. Increased sympathy between the +old and young, increased intercourse between the teacher and the taught, +increased freedom and charity of thought, and a steady purpose of internal +self-reform and progress, seem to me already bearing good fruit, by making +the young men regard their University with content and respect. And +among the young men themselves, the sight of their increased earnestness +and high-mindedness, increased sobriety and temperance, combined with a +manliness not inferior to that of the stalwart lads of twenty years ago, +has made me look upon my position among them as most noble, my work among +them as most hopeful, and made me sure that no energy which I can employ in +teaching them will ever have been thrown away. + +Much of this improvement seems to me due to the late High-Church movement; +much to the influence of Dr. Arnold; much to that of Mr. Maurice; much to +the general increase of civilization throughout the country: but whatever +be the causes of it, the fact is patent; and I take delight in thus +expressing my consciousness of it. + +Another change I must notice in the tone of young gentlemen, not only +at Cambridge, but throughout Britain, which is most wholesome and most +hopeful. I mean their altered tone in speaking to and of the labouring +classes. Thirty years ago, and even later, the young men of the labouring +classes were "the cads," "the snobs," "the blackguards"; looked on with a +dislike, contempt, and fear, which they were not backward to return, and +which were but too ready to vent themselves on both sides in ugly words and +deeds. That hateful severance between the classes was, I believe, an evil +of recent growth, unknown to old England. From the middle ages, up to the +latter years of the French war, the relation between the English gentry and +the labourers seems to have been more cordial and wholesome than in any +other country of Europe. But with the French Revolution came a change for +the worse. The Revolution terrified too many of the upper, and excited too +many of the lower classes; and the stern Tory system of repression, with +its bad habit of talking and acting as if "the government" and "the people" +were necessarily in antagonism, caused ever increasing bad blood. Besides, +the old feudal ties between class and class, employer and employed, +had been severed. Large masses of working people had gathered in the +manufacturing districts in savage independence. The agricultural labourers +had been debased by the abuses of the old Poor-law into a condition upon +which one looks back now with half-incredulous horror. Meanwhile, the +distress of the labourers became more and more severe. Then arose Luddite +mobs, meal mobs, farm riots, riots everywhere; Captain Swing and his +rickburners, Peterloo "massacres," Bristol conflagrations, and all the +ugly sights and rumours which made young lads, thirty or forty years ago, +believe (and not so wrongly) that "the masses" were their natural enemies, +and that they might have to fight, any year, or any day, for the safety of +their property and the honour of their sisters. + +How changed, thank God! is all this now. Before the influence of religion, +both Evangelical and Anglican; before the spread of those liberal +principles, founded on common humanity and justice, the triumph of which we +owe to the courage and practical good sense of the Whig party; before the +example of a Court, virtuous, humane, and beneficent; the attitude of the +British upper classes has undergone a noble change. There is no aristocracy +in the world, and there never has been one, as far as I know, which has so +honourably repented, and brought forth fruits meet for repentance; which +has so cheerfully asked what its duty was, that it might do it. It is not +merely enlightened statesmen, philanthropists, devotees, or the working +clergy, hard and heartily as they are working, who have set themselves to +do good as a duty specially required of them by creed or by station. In +the generality of younger laymen, as far as I can see, a humanity (in the +highest sense of the word) has been awakened, which bids fair, in another +generation, to abolish the last remnants of class prejudices and class +grudges. The whole creed of our young gentlemen is becoming more liberal, +their demeanour more courteous, their language more temperate. They inquire +after the welfare, or at least mingle in the sports of the labouring man, +with a simple cordiality which was unknown thirty years ago; they are +prompt, the more earnest of them, to make themselves of use to him on the +ground of a common manhood, if any means of doing good are pointed out to +them; and that it is in any wise degrading to "associate with low fellows," +is an opinion utterly obsolete, save perhaps among a few sons of squireens +in remote provinces, or of parvenus who cannot afford to recognize the +class from whence they themselves have risen. In the army, thanks to the +purifying effect of the Crimean and Indian wars, the same altered tone +is patent. Officers feel for and with their men, talk to them, strive to +instruct and amuse them more and more year by year; and--as a proof that +the reform has not been forced on the officers by public opinion from +without, but is spontaneous and from within, another instance of the +altered mind of the aristocracy--the improvement is greatest in those +regiments which are officered by men of the best blood; and in care for +and sympathy with their men, her Majesty's Footguards stands first of all. +God grant that the friendship which exists there between the leaders and +the led may not be tested to the death amid the snow-drift or on the +battle-field; but if it be so, I know too that it will stand the test. + +But if I wish for one absolute proof of the changed relation between +the upper and the lower classes, I have only to point to the volunteer +movement. In 1803, in the face of the most real and fatal danger, the +Addington ministry was afraid of allowing volunteer regiments, and Lord +Eldon, while pressing the necessity, could use as an argument that if the +people did not volunteer for the Government, they would against it. So +broad was even then the gulf between the governed and the governors. How +much broader did it become in after years! Had invasion threatened us at +any period between 1815 and 1830, or even later, would any ministry have +dared to allow volunteer regiments? Would they have been justified in doing +so, even if they had dared? + +And now what has come to pass, all the world knows: but all the world +should know likewise, that it never would have come to pass save for--not +merely the late twenty years of good government in State, twenty years +of virtue and liberality in the Court, but--the late twenty years of +increasing right-mindedness in the gentry, who have now their reward in +finding that the privates in the great majority of corps prefer being +officered by men of a rank socially superior to their own. And as good +always breeds fresh good, so this volunteer movement, made possible by the +goodwill between classes, will help in its turn to increase that goodwill. +Already, by the performance of a common duty, and the experience of a +common humanity, these volunteer corps are become centres of cordiality +between class and class; and gentleman, tradesman, and workman, the more +they see of each other, learn to like, to trust, and to befriend each other +more and more; a good work in which I hope the volunteers of the University +of Cambridge will do their part like men and gentlemen; when, leaving this +University, they become each of them, as they ought, an organizing point +for fresh volunteers in their own districts. + +I know (that I may return to Cambridge) no better example of the way in +which the altered tone of the upper classes and the volunteer movement +have acted and reacted upon each other, than may be seen in the +Cambridge Working Men's College, and its volunteer rifle corps, the 8th +Cambridgeshire. + +There we have--what perhaps could not have existed, what certainly did not +exist twenty years ago--a school of a hundred men or more, taught for the +last eight years gratuitously by men of the highest attainments in the +University; by a dean--to whom, I believe, the success of the attempt is +mainly owing; by professors, tutors, prizemen, men who are now head-masters +of public schools, who have given freely to their fellow-men knowledge +which has cost them large sums of money and the heavy labour of years. +Without insulting them by patronage, without interfering with their +religious opinions, without tampering with their independence in any wise, +but simply on the ground of a common humanity, they have been helping to +educate these men, belonging for the most part, I presume, to the very +class which this book sets forth as most unhappy and most dangerous--the +men conscious of unsatisfied and unemployed intellect. And they have their +reward in a practical and patent form. Out of these men a volunteer corps +is organized, officered partly by themselves, partly by gentlemen of the +University; a nucleus of discipline, loyalty, and civilization for the +whole population of Cambridge. + +A noble work this has been, and one which may be the parent of works nobler +still. It is the first instalment of, I will not say a debt, but a duty, +which the Universities owe to the working classes. I have tried to express +in this book, what I know were, twenty years ago, the feelings of clever +working men, looking upon the superior educational advantages of our class. +I cannot forget, any more than the working man, that the Universities +were not founded exclusively, or even primarily, for our own class; that +the great mass of students in the middle ages were drawn from the lower +classes, and that sizarships, scholarships, exhibitions, and so forth, were +founded for the sake of those classes, rather than of our own. How the case +stands now, we all know. I do not blame the Universities for the change. It +has come about, I think, simply by competition. The change began, I should +say, in the sixteenth century. Then, after the Wars of the Roses, and the +revival of letters, and the dissolution of the monasteries, the younger +sons of gentlemen betook themselves to the pursuit of letters, fighting +having become treasonable, and farming on a small scale difficult (perhaps +owing to the introduction of large sheep-farms, which happened in those +days), while no monastic orders were left to recruit the Universities, as +they did continually through the middle ages, from that labouring-class to +which they and their scholars principally belonged. + +So the gentlemen's sons were free to compete against the sons of working +men; and by virtue of their superior advantages they beat them out of +the field. We may find through the latter half of the sixteenth and the +beginning of the seventeenth centuries, bequest after bequest for the +purpose of stopping this change, and of enabling poor men's sons to enter +the Universities; but the tendency was too strong to be effectually +resisted then. Is it too strong to be resisted now? Does not the increased +civilization and education of the working classes call on the Universities +to consider whether they may not now try to become, what certainly they +were meant to be, places of teaching and training for genius of every +rank, and not merely for that of young gentlemen? Why should not wealthy +Churchmen, in addition to the many good deeds in which they employ their +wealth now-a-days, found fresh scholarships and exhibitions, confined to +the sons of working men? If it be asked, how can they be so confined? What +simpler method than that of connecting them with the National Society, and +bestowing them exclusively on lads who have distinguished themselves in our +National Schools? I believe that money spent in such a way, would be well +spent both for the Nation, the Church, and the University. As for the +introduction of such a class of lads lowering the tone of the University, I +cannot believe it. There is room enough in Cambridge for men of every rank. +There are still, in certain colleges, owing to circumstances which I should +be very sorry to see altered, a fair sprinkling of young men who, at least +before they have passed through a Cambridge career, would not be called +well-bred. But they do not lower the tone of the University; the tone of +the University raises them. Wherever there is intellectual power, good +manners are easily acquired; the public opinion of young men expresses +itself so freely, and possibly coarsely, that priggishness and forwardness +(the faults to which a clever National School pupil would be most prone) +are soon hammered out of any Cambridge man; and the result is, that some of +the most distinguished and most popular men in Cambridge, are men who have +"risen from the ranks." All honour to them for having done so. But if they +have succeeded so well, may there not be hundreds more in England who would +succeed equally? and would it not be as just to the many, as useful to the +University, in binding her to the people and the people to her, to invent +some method for giving those hundreds a fair chance? + +I earnestly press this suggestion (especially at the present time of +agitation among Churchmen on the subject of education) upon the attention, +not of the University itself, but of those wealthy men who wish well both +to the University and to the people. Not, I say, of the University: it is +not from her that the proposal must come, but from her friends outside. She +is doing her best with the tools which she has; fresh work will require +fresh tools, and I trust that such will be some day found for her. + +I have now to tell those of them who may read this book, that it is not +altogether out of date. + +Those political passions, the last outburst of which it described, have, +thank God, become mere matter of history by reason of the good government +and the unexampled prosperity of the last twelve years: but fresh outbursts +of them are always possible in a free country, whenever there is any +considerable accumulation of neglects and wrongs; and meanwhile it is +well--indeed it is necessary--for every student of history to know what +manner of men they are who become revolutionaries, and what causes drive +them to revolution; that they may judge discerningly and charitably of +their fellow-men, whenever they see them rising, however madly, against the +powers that be. + +As for the social evils described in this book, they have been much +lessened in the last few years, especially by the movement for Sanatory +Reform: but I must warn young men that they are not eradicated; that for +instance, only last year, attention was called by this book to the working +tailors in Edinburgh, and their state was found, I am assured, to be +even more miserable than that of the London men in 1848. And I must warn +them also that social evils, like dust and dirt, have a tendency to +re-accumulate perpetually; so that however well this generation may have +swept their house (and they have worked hard and honestly at it), the +rising generation will have assuredly in twenty years' time to sweep it +over again. + +One thing more I have to say, and that very earnestly, to the young men of +Cambridge. They will hear a "Conservative Reaction" talked of as imminent, +indeed as having already begun. They will be told that this reaction is +made more certain by the events now passing in North America; they will be +bidden to look at the madnesses of an unbridled democracy, to draw from +them some such lesson as the young Spartans were to draw from the drunken +Helots, and to shun with horror any further attempts to enlarge the +suffrage. + +But if they have learnt (as they should from the training of this +University) accuracy of thought and language, they will not be content with +such vague general terms as "Conservatism" and "Democracy": but will ask +themselves--If this Conservative Reaction is at hand, what things is it +likely to conserve; and still more, what ought it to conserve? If the +violences and tyrannies of American Democracy are to be really warnings +to, then in what points does American Democracy coincide with British +Democracy?--For so far and no farther can one be an example or warning for +the other. + +And looking, as they probably will under the pressure of present +excitement, at the latter question first, they will surely see that no +real analogy would exist between American and English Democracy, even were +universal suffrage to be granted to-morrow. + +For American Democracy, being merely arithmocratic, provides no +representation whatsoever for the more educated and more experienced +minority, and leaves the conduct of affairs to the uneducated and +inexperienced many, with such results as we see. But those results are, I +believe, simply impossible in a country which possesses hereditary Monarchy +and a House of Lords, to give not only voice, but practical power to +superior intelligence and experience. Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Stapleton, and +Mr. Hare have urged of late the right of minorities to be represented as +well as majorities, and have offered plans for giving them a fair hearing. +That their demands are wise, as well as just, the present condition of the +Federal States proves but too painfully. But we must not forget meanwhile, +that the minorities of Britain are not altogether unrepresented. In a +hereditary Monarch who has the power to call into his counsels, private and +public, the highest intellect of the land; in a House of Lords not wholly +hereditary, but recruited perpetually from below by the most successful +(and therefore, on the whole, the most capable) personages; in a free +Press, conducted in all its most powerful organs by men of character and +of liberal education, I see safeguards against any American tyranny of +numbers, even if an enlargement of the suffrage did degrade the general +tone of the House of Commons as much as some expect. + +As long, I believe, as the Throne, the House of Lords, and the Press, are +what, thank God, they are, so long will each enlargement of the suffrage be +a fresh source not of danger, but of safety; for it will bind the masses to +the established order of things by that loyalty which springs from content; +from the sense of being appreciated, trusted, dealt with not as children, +but as men. + +There are those who will consider such language as this especially +ill-timed just now, in the face of Strikes and Trades' Union outrages. +They point to these things as proofs of the unfitness of workmen for the +suffrage; they point especially to the late abominable murder at Sheffield, +and ask, not without reason, would you give political power to men who +would do that? + +Now that the Sheffield murder was in any wise planned or commanded by the +Trades' Unions in general, I do not believe; nor, I think, does any one +else who knows aught of the British workman. If it was not, as some of the +Sheffield men say, a private act of revenge, it was the act of only one +or two Trades' Unions of that town, which are known; and their conduct +has been already reprobated and denounced by the other Trades' Unions of +England, But there is no denying that the case as against the Trades' +Unions is a heavy one. It is notorious that they have in past years planned +and commanded illegal acts of violence. It is patent that they are too apt, +from a false sense of class-honour, to connive at such now, instead of +being, as they ought to be, the first to denounce them. The workmen will +not see, that by combining in societies for certain purposes, they make +those societies responsible for the good and lawful behaviour of all their +members, in all acts tending to further those purposes, and are bound to +say to every man joining a Trades' Union: "You shall do nothing to carry +out the objects which we have in view, save what is allowed by British +Law." They will not see that they are outraging the first principles of +justice and freedom, by dictating to any man what wages he should receive, +what master he shall work for, or any other condition which interferes with +his rights as a free agent. + +But, in the face of these facts (and very painful and disappointing +they are to me), I will ask the upper classes: Do you believe that the +average of Trades' Union members are capable of such villanies as that at +Sheffield? Do you believe that the average of them are given to violence +or illegal acts at all, even though they may connive at such acts in their +foolish and hasty fellows, by a false class-honour, not quite unknown, +I should say, in certain learned and gallant professions? Do you fancy +that there are not in these Trades' Unions, tens of thousands of loyal, +respectable, rational, patient men, as worthy of the suffrage as any +average borough voter? If you do so, you really know nothing about the +British workman. At least, you are confounding the workman of 1861 with the +workman of 1831, and fancying that he alone, of all classes, has gained +nothing by the increased education, civilization, and political experience +of thirty busy and prosperous years. You are unjust to the workman; and +more, you are unjust to your own class. For thirty years past, gentlemen +and ladies of all shades of opinion have been labouring for and among the +working classes, as no aristocracy on earth ever laboured before; and do +you suppose that all that labour has been in vain? That it has bred in the +working classes no increased reverence for law, no increased content with +existing institutions, no increased confidence in the classes socially +above them? If so, you must have as poor an opinion of the capabilities of +the upper classes, as you have of those of the lower. + +So far from the misdoings of Trades' Unions being an argument against the +extension of the suffrage, they are, in my opinion, an argument for it. I +know that I am in a minority just now. I know that the common whisper is +now, not especially of those who look for a Conservative reaction, that +these Trades' Unions must be put down by strong measures: and I confess +that I hear such language with terror. Punish, by all means, most severely, +all individual offences against individual freedom, or personal safety; +but do not interfere, surely, with the Trades' Unions themselves. Do not +try to bar these men of their right as free Englishmen to combine, if they +choose, for what they consider their own benefit. Look upon these struggles +between employers and employed as fair battles, in which, by virtue of the +irreversible laws of political economy, the party who is in the right is +almost certain to win; and interfere in no wise, save to see fair play, and +lawful means used on both sides alike. If you do more; if you interfere +in any wise with the Trades' Unions themselves, you will fail, and fail +doubly. You will not prevent the existence of combinations: you will only +make them secret, dark, revolutionary: you will demoralize the working man +thereby as surely as the merchant is demoralized by being converted into a +smuggler; you will heap up indignation, spite, and wrath against the day +of wrath; and finally, to complete your own failure, you will drive the +working man to demand an extension of the suffrage, in tones which will +very certainly get a hearing. He cares, or seems to care, little about +the suffrage now, just because he thinks that he can best serve his own +interests by working these Trades' Unions. Take from him that means of +redress (real or mistaken, no matter); and he will seek redress in a way in +which you wish him still less to seek it; by demanding a vote and obtaining +one. + +That consummation, undesirable as it may seem to many, would perhaps be the +best for the peace of the trades. These Trades' Unions, still tainted with +some of the violence, secrecy, false political economy which they inherit +from the evil times of 1830-40, last on simply, I believe, because the +workman feels that they are his only organ, that he has no other means of +making his wants and his opinions known to the British Government. Had he a +vote, he believes (and I believe with him) he could send at least a few men +to Parliament who would state his case fairly in the House of Commons, and +would not only render a reason for him, but hear reason against him, if +need were. He would be content with free discussion if he could get that. +It is the feeling that he cannot get it that drives him often into crooked +and dark ways. If any answer, that the representatives, whom he would +choose would be merely noisy demagogues, I believe them to be mistaken. +No one can have watched the Preston strike, however much he may have +disapproved, as I did, of the strike itself, without seeing from the +temper, the self-restraint, the reasonableness, the chivalrous honour of +the men, that they were as likely to choose a worthy member for the House +of Commons as any town constituency in England; no one can have watched the +leaders of the working men for the last ten years without finding among +them men capable of commanding the attention and respect of the House of +Commons, not merely by their eloquence, surprising as that is, but by their +good sense, good feeling, and good breeding. + +Some training at first, some rubbing off of angles, they might require: +though two at least I know, who would require no such training, and who +would be ornaments to any House of Commons; the most inexperienced of the +rest would not give the House one-tenth the trouble which is given by a +certain clique among the representatives of the sister Isle; and would, +moreover, learn his lesson in a week, instead of never learning it at all, +like some we know too well. Yet Catholic emancipation has pacified Ireland, +though it has brought into the House an inferior stamp of members: and much +more surely would an extension of the suffrage pacify the trades, while +it would bring into the House a far superior stamp of member to those who +compose the clique of which I have spoken. + +But why, I hear some one say impatiently, talk about this subject of all +others at this moment, when nobody, not even the working classes, cares +about a Reform Bill? + +Because I am speaking to young men, who have not yet entered public life; +and because I wish them to understand, that just because the question of +parliamentary reform is in abeyance now, it will not be in abeyance ten +years or twenty years hence. The question will be revived, ere they are +in the maturity of their manhood; and they had best face that certain +prospect, and learn to judge wisely and accurately on the subject, before +they are called on, as they will be, to act upon it. If it be true that the +present generation has done all that it can do, or intends to do, towards +the suffrage (and I have that confidence in our present rulers, that I +would submit without murmuring to their decision on the point), it is +all the more incumbent on the rising generation to learn how to do (as +assuredly they will have to do) the work which their fathers have left +undone. The question may remain long in abeyance, under the influence of +material prosperity such as the present; or under the excitement of a war, +as in Pitt's time; but let a period of distress or disaster come, and it +will be re-opened as of yore. The progress towards institutions more and +more popular may be slow, but it is sure. Whenever any class has conceived +the hope of being fairly represented, it is certain to fulfil its own +hopes, unless it employs, or provokes, violence impossible in England. +The thing will be. Let the young men of Britain take care that it is done +rightly when it is done. + +And how ought it to be done? That will depend upon any circumstances now +future and uncertain. It will depend upon the pace at which sound education +spreads among the working classes. It will depend, too, very much--I fear +only too much--upon the attitude of the upper classes to the lower, in this +very question of Trades' Unions and of Strikes. It will depend upon their +attitude toward the unrepresented classes during the next few years, upon +this very question of extended suffrage. And, therefore, I should advise, +I had almost said entreat, any young men over whom I have any influence, +to read and think freely and accurately upon the subject; taking, if +I may propose to them a text-book, Mr. Mill's admirable treatise on +"Representative Government." As for any theory of my own, if I had one +I should not put it forward. How it will not be done, I can see clearly +enough. It will not be done well by the old charter. It will not be done +well by merely lowering the money qualification of electors. But it may +be done well by other methods beside; and I can trust the freedom and +soundness of the English mind to discover the best method of all, when it +is needed. + +Let therefore this "Conservative Reaction" which I suspect is going on in +the minds of many young men at Cambridge, consider what it has to conserve. +It is not asked to conserve the Throne. That, thank God, can take good care +of itself. Let it conserve the House of Lords; and that will be conserved, +just in proportion as the upper classes shall copy the virtues of Royalty; +both of him who is taken from us, and of her who is left. Let the upper +classes learn from them, that the just and wise method of strengthening +their political power, is to labour after that social power, which comes +only by virtue and usefulness. Let them make themselves, as the present +Sovereign has made herself, morally necessary to the people; and then there +is no fear of their being found politically unnecessary. No other course +is before them, if they wish to make their "Conservative Reaction" a +permanent, even an endurable fact. If any young gentlemen fancy (and some +do) that they can strengthen their class by making any secret alliance with +the Throne against the masses, then they will discover rapidly that the +sovereigns of the House of Brunswick are grown far too wise, and far too +noble-hearted, to fall once more into that trap. If any of them (and some +do) fancy that they can better their position by sneering, whether in +public or in their club, at a Reformed House of Commons and a Free Press, +they will only accelerate the results which they most dread, by forcing +the ultra-liberal party of the House, and, what is even worse, the most +intellectual and respectable portion of the Press, to appeal to the people +against them; and if again they are tempted (as too many of them are) to +give up public life as becoming too vulgar for them, and prefer ease and +pleasure to the hard work and plain-speaking of the House of Commons; then +they will simply pay the same penalty for laziness and fastidiousness which +has been paid by the Spanish aristocracy; and will discover that if they +think their intellect unnecessary to the nation, the nation will rapidly +become of the same opinion, and go its own way without them. + +But if they are willing to make themselves, as they easily can, the +best educated, the most trustworthy, the most virtuous, the most truly +liberal-minded class of the commonweal; if they will set themselves to +study the duties of rank and property, as of a profession to which they are +called by God, and the requirements of which they must fulfil; if they will +acquire, as they can easily, a sound knowledge both of political economy, +and of the social questions of the day; if they will be foremost with +their personal influence in all good works; if they will set themselves +to compete on equal terms with the classes below them, and, as they may, +outrival them: then they will find that those classes will receive them not +altogether on equal terms; that they will accede to them a superiority, +undefined perhaps, but real and practical enough to conserve their class +and their rank, in every article for which a just and prudent man would +wish. + +But if any young gentlemen look forward (as I fear a few do still) to a +Conservative Reaction of any other kind than this; to even the least return +to the Tory maxims and methods of George the Fourth's time; to even the +least stoppage of what the world calls progress--which I should define +as the putting in practice the results of inductive science; then do +they, like king Picrochole in Rabelais, look for a kingdom which shall be +restored to them at the coming of the Cocqcigrues. The Cocqcigrues are +never coming; and none know that better than the present able and moderate +leaders of the Conservative party; none will be more anxious to teach that +fact to their young adherents, and to make them swim with the great stream, +lest it toss them contemptuously ashore upon its banks, and go on its way +unheeding. + +Return to the system of 1800--1830, is, I thank God, impossible. Even +though men's hearts should fail them, they must onward, they know not +whither: though God does know. The bigot, who believes in a system, and not +in the living God; the sentimentalist, who shrinks from facts because they +are painful to his taste; the sluggard, who hates a change because it +disturbs his ease; the simply stupid person, who cannot use his eyes and +ears; all these may cry feebly to the world to do what it has never done +since its creation--stand still awhile, that they may get their breaths. +But the brave and honest gentleman--who believes that God is not the +tempter and deceiver, but the father and the educator of man--he will +not shrink, even though the pace may be at moments rapid, the path be at +moments hid by mist; for he will believe that freedom and knowledge, as +well as virtue, are the daughters of the Most High; and he will follow them +and call on the rest to follow them, whithersoever they may lead; and will +take heart for himself and for his class, by the example of that great +Prince who is of late gone home. For if, like that most royal soul, he and +his shall follow with single eye and steadfast heart, freedom, knowledge, +and virtue; then will he and his be safe, as Royalty is safe in England +now; because both God and man have need thereof. + + + + +PREFACE. + +_Written in 1854._ + +ADDRESSED TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN. + + +My Friends,--Since I wrote this book five years ago, I have seen a good +deal of your class, and of their prospects. Much that I have seen has given +me great hope; much has disappointed me; nothing has caused me to alter the +opinions here laid down. + +Much has given me hope; especially in the North of England. I believe that +there, at least, exists a mass of prudence, self-control, genial and sturdy +manhood, which will be England's reserve-force for generations yet to come. +The last five years, moreover, have certainly been years of progress for +the good cause. The great drag upon it--namely, demagogism--has crumbled to +pieces of its own accord; and seems now only to exhibit itself in anilities +like those of the speakers who inform a mob of boys and thieves that wheat +has lately been thrown into the Thames to keep up prices, or advise them +to establish, by means hitherto undiscovered, national granaries, only +possible under the despotism of a Pharaoh. Since the 10th of April, 1848 +(one of the most lucky days which the English workman ever saw), the trade +of the mob-orator has dwindled down to such last shifts as these, to which +the working man sensibly seems merely to answer, as he goes quietly about +his business, "Why will you still keep talking, Signor Benedick? Nobody +marks you." + +But the 10th of April, 1848, has been a beneficial crisis, not merely in +the temper of the working men, so called, but in the minds of those who are +denominated by them "the aristocracy." There is no doubt that the classes +possessing property have been facing, since 1848, all social questions with +an average of honesty, earnestness, and good feeling which has no parallel +since the days of the Tudors, and that hundreds and thousands of "gentlemen +and ladies" in Great Britain now are saying, "Show what we ought to do to +be just to the workman, and we will do it, whatsoever it costs." They may +not be always correct (though they generally are so) in their conceptions +of what ought to be done; but their purpose is good and righteous; and +those who hold it are daily increasing in number. The love of justice and +mercy toward the handicraftsman is spreading rapidly as it never did before +in any nation upon earth; and if any man still represents the holders of +property, as a class, as the enemies of those whom they employ, desiring +their slavery and their ignorance, I believe that he is a liar and a child +of the devil, and that he is at his father's old work, slandering and +dividing between man and man. These words may be severe: but they are +deliberate; and working men are, I hope, sufficiently accustomed to hear me +call a spade a spade, when I am pleading for them, to allow me to do the +same when I am pleading to them. + +Of the disappointing experiences which I have had I shall say nothing, +save in as far as I can, by alluding to them, point out to the working man +the causes which still keep him weak: but I am bound to say that those +disappointments have strengthened my conviction that this book, in the +main, speaks the truth. + +I do not allude, of course, to the thoughts, and feelings of the hero. They +are compounded of right and wrong, and such as I judged (and working men +whom I am proud to number among my friends have assured me that I judged +rightly) that a working man of genius would feel during the course of +his self-education. These thoughts and feelings (often inconsistent and +contradictory to each other), stupid or careless, or ill-willed persons, +have represented as my own opinions, having, as it seems to me, turned +the book upside down before they began to read it. I am bound to pay the +working men, and their organs in the press, the compliment of saying that +no such misrepresentations proceeded from them. However deeply some of +them may have disagreed with me, all of them, as far as I have been able +to judge, had sense to see what I meant; and so, also, have the organs of +the High-Church party, to whom, differing from them on many points, I am +equally bound to offer my thanks for their fairness. But, indeed, the way +in which this book, in spite of its crudities, has been received by persons +of all ranks and opinions, who instead of making me an offender for a +word, have taken the book heartily and honestly, in the spirit and not in +the letter, has made me most hopeful for the British mind, and given me +a strong belief that, in spite of all foppery, luxury, covetousness, and +unbelief, the English heart is still strong and genial, able and willing +to do and suffer great things, as soon as the rational way of doing and +suffering them becomes plain. Had I written this book merely to please +my own fancy, this would be a paltry criterion, at once illogical and +boastful; but I wrote it, God knows, in the fear of God, that I might speak +what seems to me the truth of God. I trusted in Him to justify me, in spite +of my own youth, inexperience, hastiness, clumsiness; and He has done it; +and, I trust, will do it to the end. + +And now, what shall I say to you, my friends, about the future? Your +destiny is still in your own hands. For the last seven years you have let +it slip through your fingers. If you are better off than you were in 1848, +you owe it principally to those laws of political economy (as they are +called), which I call the brute natural accidents of supply and demand, or +to the exertions which have been made by upright men of the very classes +whom demagogues taught you to consider as your natural enemies. Pardon me +if I seem severe; but, as old Aristotle has it, "Both parties being my +friends, it is a sacred duty to honour truth first." And is this not the +truth? How little have the working men done to carry out that idea of +association in which, in 1848-9, they were all willing to confess their +salvation lay. Had the money which was wasted in the hapless Preston strike +been wisely spent in relieving the labour market by emigration, or in +making wages more valuable by enabling the workman to buy from co-operative +stores and mills his necessaries at little above cost price, how much +sorrow and heart-burning might have been saved to the iron-trades. Had the +real English endurance and courage which was wasted in that strike been +employed in the cause of association, the men might have been, ere now, far +happier than they are ever likely to be, without the least injury to the +masters. What, again, has been done toward developing the organization +of the Trades' Unions into its true form, Association for distribution, +from its old, useless, and savage form of Association for the purpose of +resistance to masters--a war which is at first sight hopeless, even were it +just, because the opposite party holds in his hand the supplies of his foe +as well as his own, and therefore can starve him out at his leisure? What +has been done, again, toward remedying the evils of the slop system, which +this book especially exposed? The true method for the working men, if they +wished to save their brothers and their brothers' wives and daughters from +degradation, was to withdraw their custom from the slopsellers, and to +deal, even at a temporary increase of price, with associate workmen. Have +they done so? They can answer for themselves. In London (as in the country +towns), the paltry temptation of buying in the cheapest market has still +been too strong for the labouring man. In Scotland and in the North of +England, thank God, the case has been very different; and to the North I +must look still, as I did when I wrote Alton Locke, for the strong men in +whose hands lies the destiny of the English handicraftsman. + +God grant that the workmen of the South of England may bestir themselves +ere it be too late, and discover that the only defence against want is +self-restraint; the only defence against slavery, obedience to rule; and +that, instead of giving themselves up, bound hand and foot, by their own +fancy for a "freedom" which is but selfish and conceited license, to the +brute accidents of the competitive system, they may begin to organize +among themselves associations for buying and selling the necessaries of +life, which may enable them to weather the dark season of high prices and +stagnation, which is certain sooner or later, to follow in the footsteps of +war. + +On politics I have little to say. My belief remains unchanged that true +Christianity, and true monarchy also, are not only compatible with, but +require as their necessary complement, true freedom for every man of every +class; and that the Charter, now defunct, was just as wise and as righteous +a "Reform Bill" as any which England had yet had, or was likely to have. +But I frankly say that my experience of the last five years gives me little +hope of any great development of the true democratic principle in Britain, +because it gives me little sign that the many are fit for it. Remember +always that Democracy means a government not merely by numbers of isolated +individuals, but by a Demos--by men accustomed to live in Demoi, or +corporate bodies, and accustomed, therefore, to the self-control, obedience +to law, and self-sacrificing public spirit, without which a corporate body +cannot exist: but that a "democracy" of mere numbers is no democracy, +but a mere brute "arithmocracy," which is certain to degenerate into an +"ochlocracy," or government by the mob, in which the numbers have no real +share: an oligarchy of the fiercest, the noisiest, the rashest, and the +most shameless, which is surely swallowed up either by a despotism, as in +France, or as in Athens, by utter national ruin, and helpless slavery to +a foreign invader. Let the workmen of Britain train themselves in the +corporate spirit, and in the obedience and self-control which it brings, as +they easily can in associations, and bear in mind always that _only he who +can obey is fit to rule_; and then, when they are fit for it, the Charter +may come, or things, I trust, far better than the Charter; and till they +have done so, let them thank the just and merciful Heavens for keeping +out of their hands any power, and for keeping off their shoulders any +responsibility, which they would not be able to use aright. I thank God +heartily, this day, that I have no share in the government of Great +Britain; and I advise my working friends to do the same, and to believe +that, when they are fit to take their share therein, all the powers of +earth cannot keep them from taking it; and that, till then, happy is the +man who does the duty which lies nearest him, who educates his family, +raises his class, performs his daily work as to God and to his country, not +merely to his employer and himself; for it is only he that is faithful over +a few things who will be made, or will be happy in being made, ruler over +many things. + +Yours ever, + +C. K. + + + + +ALTON LOCKE, + +TAILOR AND POET. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A POET'S CHILDHOOD. + + +I am a Cockney among Cockneys. Italy and the Tropics, the Highlands +and Devonshire, I know only in dreams. Even the Surrey Hills, of whose +loveliness I have heard so much, are to me a distant fairy-land, whose +gleaming ridges I am worthy only to behold afar. With the exception of two +journeys, never to be forgotten, my knowledge of England is bounded by the +horizon which encircles Richmond Hill. + +My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of its jumble of little +shops and little terraces, each exhibiting some fresh variety of capricious +ugliness; the little scraps of garden before the doors, with their dusty, +stunted lilacs and balsam poplars, were my only forests; my only wild +animals, the dingy, merry sparrows, who quarrelled fearlessly on my +window-sill, ignorant of trap or gun. From my earliest childhood, through +long nights of sleepless pain, as the midnight brightened into dawn, and +the glaring lamps grew pale, I used to listen, with pleasant awe, to the +ceaseless roll of the market-waggons, bringing up to the great city the +treasures of the gay green country, the land of fruits and flowers, for +which I have yearned all my life in vain. They seemed to my boyish fancy +mysterious messengers from another world: the silent, lonely night, in +which they were the only moving things, added to the wonder. I used to get +out of bed to gaze at them, and envy the coarse men and sluttish women who +attended them, their labour among verdant plants and rich brown mould, on +breezy slopes, under God's own clear sky. I fancied that they learnt what +I knew I should have learnt there; I knew not then that "the eye only sees +that which it brings with it the power of seeing." When will their eyes be +opened? When will priests go forth into the highways and the hedges, and +preach to the ploughman and the gipsy the blessed news, that there too, in +every thicket and fallow-field, is the house of God,--there, too, the gate +of Heaven? + +I do not complain that I am a Cockney. That, too, is God's gift. He +made me one, that I might learn to feel for poor wretches who sit +stifled in reeking garrets and workrooms, drinking in disease with every +breath,--bound in their prison-house of brick and iron, with their own +funeral pall hanging over them, in that canopy of fog and poisonous smoke, +from their cradle to their grave. I have drunk of the cup of which they +drink. And so I have learnt--if, indeed, I have learnt--to be a poet--a +poet of the people. That honour, surely, was worth buying with asthma, +and rickets, and consumption, and weakness, and--worst of all to me--with +ugliness. It was God's purpose about me; and, therefore, all circumstances +combined to imprison me in London. I used once, when I worshipped +circumstance, to fancy it my curse, Fate's injustice to me, which kept +me from developing my genius, asserting my rank among poets. I longed to +escape to glorious Italy, or some other southern climate, where natural +beauty would have become the very element which I breathed; and yet, what +would have come of that? Should I not, as nobler spirits than I have done, +have idled away my life in Elysian dreams, singing out like a bird into the +air, inarticulately, purposeless, for mere joy and fulness of heart; and +taking no share in the terrible questionings, the terrible strugglings of +this great, awful, blessed time--feeling no more the pulse of the great +heart of England stirring me? I used, as I said, to call it the curse of +circumstance that I was a sickly, decrepit Cockney. My mother used to tell +me that it was the cross which God had given me to bear. I know now that +she was right there. She used to say that my disease was God's will. I do +not think, though, that she spoke right there also. I think that it was +the will of the world and of the devil, of man's avarice and laziness and +ignorance. And so would my readers, perhaps, had they seen the shop in +the city where I was born and nursed, with its little garrets reeking +with human breath, its kitchens and areas with noisome sewers. A sanitary +reformer would not be long in guessing the cause of my unhealthiness. He +would not rebuke me--nor would she, sweet soul! now that she is at rest and +bliss--for my wild longings to escape, for my envying the very flies and +sparrows their wings that I might flee miles away into the country, and +breathe the air of heaven once, and die. I have had my wish. I have made +two journeys far away into the country, and they have been enough for me. + +My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small +retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate; and when he died, my +mother came down, and lived penuriously enough, I knew not how till I +grew older, down in that same suburban street. She had been brought +up an Independent. After my father's death she became a Baptist, from +conscientious scruples. She considered the Baptists, as I do, as the only +sect who thoroughly embody the Calvinistic doctrines. She held it, as I do, +an absurd and impious thing for those who believe mankind to be children +of the devil till they have been consciously "converted," to baptise +unconscious infants and give them the sign of God's mercy on the mere +chance of that mercy being intended for them. When God had proved by +converting them, that they were not reprobate and doomed to hell by His +absolute and eternal will, then, and not till then, dare man baptise them +into His name. She dared not palm a presumptuous fiction on herself, +and call it "charity." So, though we had both been christened during +my father's lifetime, she purposed to have us rebaptised, if ever that +happened--which, in her sense of the word, never happened, I am afraid, to +me. + +She gloried in her dissent; for she was sprung from old Puritan blood, +which had flowed again and again beneath the knife of Star-Chamber +butchers, and on the battle-fields of Naseby and Sedgemoor. And on winter +evenings she used to sit with her Bible on her knee, while I and my little +sister Susan stood beside her and listened to the stories of Gideon and +Barak, and Samson and Jephthah, till her eye kindled up, and her thoughts +passed forth from that old Hebrew time home into those English times which +she fancied, and not untruly, like them. And we used to shudder, and yet +listen with a strange fascination, as she told us how her ancestor called +his seven sons off their small Cambridge farm, and horsed and armed them +himself to follow behind Cromwell, and smite kings and prelates with "the +sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Whether she were right or wrong, what +is it to me? What is it now to her, thank God? But those stories, and the +strict, stern Puritan education, learnt from the Independents and not the +Baptists, which accompanied them, had their effect on me, for good and ill. + +My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and +that only. She seldom smiled. Her word was absolute. She never commanded +twice, without punishing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness +in her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But she thought +herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some +ascetic of the middle ages--so do extremes meet! It was "carnal," she +considered. She had as yet no right to have any "spiritual affection" for +us. We were still "children of wrath and of the devil,"--not yet "convinced +of sin," "converted, born again." She had no more spiritual bond with us, +she thought, than she had with a heathen or a Papist. She dared not even +pray for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. +For though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear logical +sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had it not been decided +from all eternity? We were elect, or we were reprobate. Could her prayers +alter that? If He had chosen us, He would call us in His own good time: +and, if not,--. Only again and again, as I afterwards discovered from a +journal of hers, she used to beseech God with agonized tears to set her +mind at rest by revealing to her His will towards us. For that comfort she +could at least rationally pray. But she received no answer. Poor, beloved +mother! If thou couldst not read the answer, written in every flower and +every sunbeam, written in the very fact of our existence here at all, what +answer would have sufficed thee. + +And yet, with all this, she kept the strictest watch over our morality. +Fear, of course, was the only motive she employed; for how could our still +carnal understandings be affected with love to God? And love to herself +was too paltry and temporary to be urged by one who knew that her life was +uncertain, and who was always trying to go down to the deepest eternal +ground and reason of everything, and take her stand upon that. So our god, +or gods rather, till we were twelve years old, were hell, the rod, the ten +commandments, and public opinion. Yet under them, not they, but something +deeper far, both in her and us, preserved us pure. Call it natural +character, conformation of the spirit,--conformation of the brain, if you +like, if you are a scientific man and a phrenologist. I never yet could +dissect and map out my own being, or my neighbour's, as you analysts do. To +me, I myself, ay, and each person round me, seem one inexplicable whole; to +take away a single faculty whereof, is to destroy the harmony, the meaning, +the life of all the rest. That there is a duality in us--a lifelong battle +between flesh and spirit--we all, alas! know well enough; but which is +flesh and which is spirit, what philosophers in these days can tell us? +Still less bad we two found out any such duality or discord in ourselves; +for we were gentle and obedient children. The pleasures of the world +did not tempt us. We did not know of their existence; and no foundlings +educated in a nunnery ever grew up in a more virginal and spotless +innocence--if ignorance be such--than did Susan and I. + +The narrowness of my sphere of observation only concentrated the faculty +into greater strength. The few natural objects which I met--and they, of +course, constituted my whole outer world (for art and poetry were tabooed +both by my rank and my mother's sectarianism, and the study of human beings +only develops itself as the boy grows into the man)--these few natural +objects, I say, I studied with intense keenness. I knew every leaf and +flower in the little front garden; every cabbage and rhubarb plant in +Battersea fields was wonderful and beautiful to me. Clouds and water I +learned to delight in, from my occasional lingerings on Battersea bridge, +and yearning westward looks toward the sun setting above rich meadows and +wooded gardens, to me a forbidden El Dorado. + +I brought home wild-flowers and chance beetles and butterflies, and pored +over them, not in the spirit of a naturalist, but of a poet. They were to +me God's angels shining in coats of mail and fairy masquerading dresses. I +envied them their beauty, their freedom. At last I made up my mind, in the +simple tenderness of a child's conscience, that it was wrong to rob them of +the liberty for which I pined,--to take them away from the beautiful broad +country whither I longed to follow them; and I used to keep them a day or +two, and then, regretfully, carry them back, and set them loose on the +first opportunity, with many compunctions of heart, when, as generally +happened, they had been starved to death in the mean time. + +They were my only recreations after the hours of the small day-school at +the neighbouring chapel, where I learnt to read, write, and sum; except, +now and then, a London walk, with my mother holding my hand tight the whole +way. She would have hoodwinked me, stopped my ears with cotton, and led +me in a string,--kind, careful soul!--if it had been reasonably safe on +a crowded pavement, so fearful was she lest I should be polluted by some +chance sight or sound of the Babylon which she feared and hated--almost as +much as she did the Bishops. + +The only books which I knew were the Pilgrim's Progress and the Bible. The +former was my Shakespeare, my Dante, my Vedas, by which I explained every +fact and phenomenon of life. London was the City of Destruction, from +which I was to flee; I was Christian; the Wicket of the Way of Life I +had strangely identified with the turnpike at Battersea-bridge end; and +the rising ground of Mortlake and Wimbledon was the Land of Beulah--the +Enchanted Mountains of the Shepherds. If I could once get there I was +saved: a carnal view, perhaps, and a childish one; but there was a dim +meaning and human reality in it nevertheless. + +As for the Bible, I knew nothing of it really, beyond the Old Testament. +Indeed, the life of Christ had little chance of becoming interesting to me. +My mother had given me formally to understand that it spoke of matters too +deep for me; that "till converted, the natural man could not understand the +things of God": and I obtained little more explanation of it from the two +unintelligible, dreary sermons to which I listened every dreary Sunday, in +terror lest a chance shuffle of my feet, or a hint of drowsiness,--natural +result of the stifling gallery and glaring windows and gas lights,--should +bring down a lecture and a punishment when I returned home. Oh, those +"sabbaths!"--days, not of rest, but utter weariness, when the beetles and +the flowers were put by, and there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity +but books of which I could not understand a word: when play, laughter, +or even a stare out of window at the sinful, merry, sabbath-breaking +promenaders, were all forbidden, as if the commandment had run, "In it thou +shalt take no manner of amusement, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter." By +what strange ascetic perversion has _that_ got to mean "keeping holy the +sabbath-day"? + +Yet there was an hour's relief in the evening, when either my mother told +us Old Testament stories, or some preacher or two came in to supper after +meeting; and I used to sit in the corner and listen to their talk; not that +I understood a word, but the mere struggle to understand--the mere watching +my mother's earnest face--my pride in the reverent flattery with which the +worthy men addressed her as "a mother in Israel," were enough to fill up +the blank for me till bed-time. + +Of "vital Christianity" I heard much; but, with all my efforts, could find +out nothing. Indeed, it did not seem interesting enough to tempt me to find +out much. It seemed a set of doctrines, believing in which was to have a +magical effect on people, by saving them from the everlasting torture due +to sins and temptations which I had never felt. Now and then, believing, +in obedience to my mother's assurances, and the solemn prayers of the +ministers about me, that I was a child of hell, and a lost and miserable +sinner, I used to have accesses of terror, and fancy that I should surely +wake next morning in everlasting flames. Once I put my finger a moment +into the fire, as certain Papists, and Protestants too, have done, not +only to themselves, but to their disciples, to see if it would be so very +dreadfully painful; with what conclusions the reader may judge.... Still, I +could not keep up the excitement. Why should I? The fear of pain is not the +fear of sin, that I know of; and, indeed, the thing was unreal altogether +in my case, and my heart, my common sense, rebelled against it again and +again; till at last I got a terrible whipping for taking my little sister's +part, and saying that if she was to die,--so gentle, and obedient, and +affectionate as she was,--God would be very unjust in sending her to +hell-fire, and that I was quite certain He would do no such thing--unless +He were the Devil: an opinion which I have since seen no reason to change. +The confusion between the King of Hell and the King of Heaven has cleared +up, thank God, since then! + +So I was whipped and put to bed--the whipping altering my secret heart just +about as much as the dread of hell-fire did. + +I speak as a Christian man--an orthodox Churchman (if you require that +shibboleth). Was I so very wrong? What was there in the idea of religion +which was represented to me at home to captivate me? What was the use +of a child's hearing of "God's great love manifested in the scheme of +redemption," when he heard, in the same breath, that the effects of that +redemption were practically confined only to one human being out of a +thousand, and that the other nine hundred and ninety-nine were lost and +damned from their birth-hour to all eternity--not only by the absolute +will and reprobation of God (though that infernal blasphemy I heard often +enough), but also, putting that out of the question, by the mere fact of +being born of Adam's race? And this to a generation to whom God's love +shines out in every tree and flower and hedge-side bird; to whom the +daily discoveries of science are revealing that love in every microscopic +animalcule which peoples the stagnant pool! This to working men, whose +craving is only for some idea which shall give equal hopes, claims, and +deliverances, to all mankind alike! This to working men, who, in the smiles +of their innocent children, see the heaven which they have lost--the +messages of baby-cherubs, made in God's own image! This to me, to whom +every butterfly, every look at my little sister, contradicted the lie! You +may say that such thoughts were too deep for a child; that I am ascribing +to my boyhood the scepticism of my manhood; but it is not so; and what went +on in my mind goes on in the minds of thousands. It is the cause of the +contempt into which not merely sectarian Protestantism, but Christianity +altogether, has fallen in the minds of the thinking workmen. Clergymen, who +anathematize us for wandering into Unitarianism--you, you have driven us +thither. You must find some explanation of the facts of Christianity more +in accordance with the truths which we do know, and will live and die for, +or you can never hope to make us Christians; or, if we do return to the +true fold, it will be as I returned, after long, miserable years of +darkling error, to a higher truth than most of you have yet learned to +preach. + +But those old Jewish heroes did fill my whole heart and soul. I learnt from +them lessons which I never wish to unlearn. Whatever else I saw about them, +this I saw,--that they were patriots, deliverers from that tyranny and +injustice from which the child's heart,--"child of the devil" though you +may call him,--instinctively, and, as I believe, by a divine inspiration, +revolts. Moses leading his people out of Egypt; Gideon, Barak, and Samson, +slaying their oppressors; David, hiding in the mountains from the tyrant, +with his little band of those who had fled from the oppressions of an +aristocracy of Nabals; Jehu, executing God's vengeance on the kings--they +were my heroes, my models; they mixed themselves up with the dim legends +about the Reformation martyrs, Cromwell and Hampden, Sidney and Monmouth, +which I had heard at my mother's knee. Not that the perennial oppression +of the masses, in all ages and countries, had yet risen on me as an +awful, torturing, fixed idea. I fancied, poor fool! that tyranny was the +exception, and not the rule. But it was the mere sense of abstract pity +and justice which was delighted in me. I thought that these were old fairy +tales, such as never need be realized again. I learnt otherwise in after +years. + +I have often wondered since, why all cannot read the same lesson as I did +in those old Hebrew Scriptures--that they, of all books in the world, +have been wrested into proofs of the divine right of kings, the eternal +necessity of slavery! But the eye only sees what it brings with it the +power of seeing. The upper classes, from their first day at school, to +their last day at college, read of nothing but the glories of Salamis and +Marathon, of freedom and of the old republics. And what comes of it? No +more than their tutors know will come of it, when they thrust into the +boys' hands books which give the lie in every page to their own political +superstitions. + +But when I was just turned of thirteen, an altogether new fairy-land was +opened to me by some missionary tracts and journals, which were lent to my +mother by the ministers. Pacific coral islands and volcanoes, cocoa-nut +groves and bananas, graceful savages with paint and feathers--what an El +Dorado! How I devoured them and dreamt of them, and went there in fancy, +and preached small sermons as I lay in my bed at night to Tahitians and New +Zealanders, though I confess my spiritual eyes were, just as my physical +eyes would have been, far more busy with the scenery than with the souls +of my audience. However, that was the place for me, I saw clearly. And one +day, I recollect it well, in the little dingy, foul, reeking, twelve foot +square back-yard, where huge smoky party-walls shut out every breath of air +and almost all the light of heaven, I had climbed up between the water-butt +and the angle of the wall for the purpose of fishing out of the dirty fluid +which lay there, crusted with soot and alive with insects, to be renewed +only three times in the seven days, some of the great larvae and kicking +monsters which made up a large item in my list of wonders: all of a sudden +the horror of the place came over me; those grim prison-walls above, with +their canopy of lurid smoke; the dreary, sloppy, broken pavement; the +horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools; the utter want of form, colour, +life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse +my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific +Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and +bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed +aloud to God to let me be a missionary. + +Half fearfully I let out my wishes to my mother when she came home. She +gave me no answer; but, as I found out afterwards,--too late, alas! for +her, if not for me,--she, like Mary, had "laid up all these things, and +treasured them in her heart." + +You may guess, then, my delight when, a few days afterwards, I heard that a +real live missionary was coming to take tea with us. A man who had actually +been in New Zealand!--the thought was rapture. I painted him to myself over +and over again; and when, after the first burst of fancy, I recollected +that he might possibly not have adopted the native costume of that +island, or, if he had, that perhaps it would look too strange for him to +wear it about London, I settled within myself that he was to be a tall, +venerable-looking man, like the portraits of old Puritan divines which +adorned our day-room; and as I had heard that "he was powerful in prayer," +I adorned his right hand with that mystic weapon "all-prayer," with +which Christian, when all other means have failed, finally vanquishes +the fiend--which instrument, in my mind, was somewhat after the model +of an infernal sort of bill or halbert--all hooks, edges, spikes, and +crescents--which I had passed, shuddering, once, in the hand of an old suit +of armour in Wardour Street. + +He came--and with him the two ministers who often drank tea with my mother; +both of whom, as they played some small part in the drama of my after-life, +I may as well describe here. The elder was a little, sleek, silver-haired +old man, with a blank, weak face, just like a white rabbit. He loved me, +and I loved him too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me +and Susan. Had his head been equal to his heart!--but what has been was +to be--and the dissenting clergy, with a few noble exceptions among the +Independents, are not the strong men of the day--none know that better than +the workmen. The old man's name was Bowyer. The other, Mr. Wigginton, was a +younger man; tall, grim, dark, bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating +suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his +ears. He preached "higher doctrine," _i.e._, more fatalist and antinomian +than his gentler colleague,--and, having also a stentorian voice, was much +the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him--and if any man ever +deserved hatred, he did. + +Well, they came. My heart was in my mouth as I opened the door to them, and +sank back again to the very lowest depths of my inner man when my eyes fell +on the face and figure of the missionary--a squat, red-faced, pig-eyed, +low-browed man, with great soft lips that opened back to his very ears: +sensuality, conceit, and cunning marked on every feature--an innate +vulgarity, from which the artisan and the child recoil with an instinct as +true, perhaps truer, than that of the courtier, showing itself in every +tone and motion--I shrank into a corner, so crestfallen that I could not +even exert myself to hand round the bread and butter, for which I got duly +scolded afterwards. Oh! that man!--how he bawled and contradicted, and laid +down the law, and spoke to my mother in a fondling, patronizing way, which +made me, I knew not why, boil over with jealousy and indignation. How he +filled his teacup half full of the white sugar to buy which my mother had +curtailed her yesterday's dinner--how he drained the few remaining drops +of the threepennyworth of cream, with which Susan was stealing off to keep +it as an unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast the next morning--how +he talked of the natives, not as St. Paul might of his converts, but as a +planter might of his slaves; overlaying all his unintentional confessions +of his own greed and prosperity, with cant, flimsy enough for even a boy to +see through, while his eyes were not blinded with the superstition that a +man must be pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with a jumble of +old English picked out of our translation of the New Testament. Such was +the man I saw. I don't deny that all are not like him. I believe there are +noble men of all denominations, doing their best according to their light, +all over the world; but such was the one I saw--and the men who were sent +home to plead the missionary cause, whatever the men may be like who stay +behind and work, are, from my small experience, too often such. It appears +to me to be the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries, go +simply because they are men of such inferior powers and attainments that if +they stayed in England they would starve. + +Three parts of his conversation, after all, was made up of abuse of the +missionaries of the Church of England, not for doing nothing, but for being +so much more successful than his own sect; accusing them, in the same +breath, of being just of the inferior type of which he was himself, and +also of being mere University fine gentlemen. Really, I do not wonder, upon +his own showing, at the savages preferring them to him; and I was pleased +to hear the old white-headed minister gently interpose at the end of one of +his tirades--"We must not be jealous, my brother, if the Establishment has +discovered what we, I hope, shall find out some day, that it is not wise to +draft our missionaries from the offscouring of the ministry, and serve God +with that which costs us nothing except the expense of providing for them +beyond seas." + +There was somewhat of a roguish twinkle in the old man's eye as he said it, +which emboldened me to whisper a question to him. + +"Why is it, Sir, that in olden times the heathens used to crucify the +missionaries and burn them, and now they give them beautiful farms, and +build them houses, and carry them about on their backs?" + +The old man seemed a little puzzled, and so did the company, to whom he +smilingly retailed my question. + +As nobody seemed inclined to offer a solution, I ventured one myself. + +"Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used to be?" + +"The heart of man," answered the tall, dark minister, "is, and ever was, +equally at enmity with God." + +"Then, perhaps," I ventured again, "what the missionaries preach now is not +quite the same as what the missionaries used to preach in St. Paul's time, +and so the heathens are not so angry at it?" + +My mother looked thunder at me, and so did all except my white-headed +friend, who said, gently enough, + +"It may be that the child's words come from God." + +Whether they did or not, the child took very good care to speak no more +words till he was alone with his mother; and then finished off that +disastrous evening by a punishment for the indecency of saying, before his +little sister, that he thought it "a great pity the missionaries taught +black people to wear ugly coats and trousers; they must have looked so +much handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and strings of +shells." + +So the missionary dream died out of me, by a foolish and illogical +antipathy enough; though, after all, it was a child of my imagination only, +not of my heart; and the fancy, having bred it, was able to kill it also. +And David became my ideal. To be a shepherd-boy, and sit among beautiful +mountains, and sing hymns of my own making, and kill lions and bears, +with now and then the chance of a stray giant--what a glorious life! And +if David slew giants with a sling and a stone, why should not I?--at all +events, one ought to know how; so I made a sling out of an old garter and +some string, and began to practise in the little back-yard. But my first +shot broke a neighbour's window, value sevenpence, and the next flew +back in my face, and cut my head open; so I was sent supperless to bed +for a week, till the sevenpence had been duly saved out of my hungry +stomach--and, on the whole, I found the hymn-writing side of David's +character the more feasible; so I tried, and with much brains-beating, +committed the following lines to a scrap of dirty paper. And it was +strangely significant, that in this, my first attempt, there was an +instinctive denial of the very doctrine of "particular redemption," which +I had been hearing all my life, and an instinctive yearning after the +very Being in whom I had been told I had "no part nor lot" till I was +"converted." Here they are. I am not ashamed to call them--doggerel though +they be--an inspiration from Him of whom they speak. If not from Him, good +readers, from whom? + + Jesus, He loves one and all; + Jesus, He loves children small; + Their souls are sitting round His feet, + On high, before His mercy-seat. + + When on earth He walked in shame, + Children small unto Him came; + At His feet they knelt and prayed, + On their heads His hands He laid. + + Came a spirit on them then, + Greater than of mighty men; + A spirit gentle, meek, and mild, + A spirit good for king and child. + + Oh! that spirit give to me, + Jesus, Lord, where'er I be! + So-- + +But I did not finish them, not seeing very clearly what to do with that +spirit when I obtained it; for, indeed, it seemed a much finer thing to +fight material Apollyons with material swords of iron, like my friend +Christian, or to go bear and lion hunting with David, than to convert +heathens by meekness--at least, if true meekness was at all like that of +the missionary whom I had lately seen. + +I showed the verses in secret to my little sister. My mother heard us +singing them together, and extorted, grimly enough, a confession of the +authorship. I expected to be punished for them (I was accustomed weekly to +be punished for all sorts of deeds and words, of the harmfulness of which +I had not a notion). It was, therefore, an agreeable surprise when the old +minister, the next Sunday evening, patted my head, and praised me for them. + +"A hopeful sign of young grace, brother," said he to the dark tall man. +"May we behold here an infant Timothy!" + +"Bad doctrine, brother, in that first line--bad doctrine, which I am +sure he did not learn from our excellent sister here. Remember, my boy, +henceforth, that Jesus does _not_ love one and all--not that I am angry +with you. The carnal mind cannot be expected to understand divine things, +any more than the beasts that perish. Nevertheless, the blessed message of +the Gospel stands true, that Christ loves none but His Bride, the Church. +His merits, my poor child, extend to none but the elect. Ah! my dear sister +Locke, how delightful to think of the narrow way of discriminating grace! +How it enhances the believer's view of his own exceeding privileges, to +remember that there be few that be saved!" + +I said nothing. I thought myself only too lucky to escape so well from the +danger of having done anything out of my own head. But somehow Susan and I +never altered it when we sang it to ourselves. + + * * * * * + +I thought it necessary, for the sake of those who might read my story, to +string together these few scattered recollections of my boyhood,--to give, +as it were, some sample of the cotyledon leaves of my young life-plant, and +of the soil in which it took root, ere it was transplanted--but I will not +forestall my sorrows. After all, they have been but types of the woes of +thousands who "die and give no sign." Those to whom the struggles of every, +even the meanest, human being are scenes of an awful drama, every incident +of which is to be noted with reverent interest, will not find them void of +meaning; while the life which opens in my next chapter is, perhaps, full +enough of mere dramatic interest (and whose life is not, were it but truly +written?) to amuse merely as a novel. Ay, grim and real is the action and +suffering which begins with my next page,--as you yourself would have +found, high-born reader (if such chance to light upon this story), had +you found yourself at fifteen, after a youth of convent-like seclusion, +settled, apparently for life--in a tailor's workshop. + +Ay--laugh!--we tailors can quote poetry as well as make your court-dresses: + + You sit in a cloud and sing, like pictured angels, + And say the world runs smooth--while right below + Welters the black fermenting heap of griefs + Whereon your state is built.... + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE TAILOR'S WORKROOM. + + +Have you done laughing! Then I will tell you how the thing came to pass. + +My father had a brother, who had steadily risen in life, in proportion as +my father fell. They had both begun life in a grocer's shop. My father +saved enough to marry, when of middle age, a woman of his own years, and +set up a little shop, where there were far too many such already, in the +hope--to him, as to the rest of the world, quite just and innocent--of +drawing away as much as possible of his neighbours' custom. He failed, +died--as so many small tradesmen do--of bad debts and a broken heart, and +left us beggars. His brother, more prudent, had, in the meantime, risen to +be foreman; then he married, on the strength of his handsome person, his +master's blooming widow; and rose and rose, year by year, till, at the +time of which I speak, he was owner of a first-rate grocery establishment +in the City, and a pleasant villa near Herne Hill, and had a son, a year +or two older than myself, at King's College, preparing for Cambridge and +the Church--that being now-a-days the approved method of converting a +tradesman's son into a gentleman,--whereof let artisans, and gentlemen +also, take note. + +My aristocratic readers--if I ever get any, which I pray God I may--may +be surprised at so great an inequality of fortune between two cousins; +but the thing is common in our class. In the higher ranks, a difference +in income implies none in education or manners, and the poor "gentleman" +is a fit companion for dukes and princes--thanks to the old usages of +Norman chivalry, which after all were a democratic protest against the +sovereignty, if not of rank, at least of money. The knight, however +penniless, was the prince's equal, even his superior, from whose hands he +must receive knighthood; and the "squire of low degree," who honourably +earned his spurs, rose also into that guild, whose qualifications, however +barbaric, were still higher ones than any which the pocket gives. But in +the commercial classes money most truly and fearfully "makes the man." A +difference in income, as you go lower, makes more and more difference in +the supply of the common necessaries of life; and worse--in education and +manners, in all which polishes the man, till you may see often, as in +my case, one cousin a Cambridge undergraduate, and the other a tailor's +journeyman. + +My uncle one day came down to visit us, resplendent in a black velvet +waistcoat, thick gold chain, and acres of shirt-front; and I and Susan were +turned to feed on our own curiosity and awe in the back-yard, while he and +my mother were closeted together for an hour or so in the living-room. When +he was gone, my mother called me in; and with eyes which would have been +tearful had she allowed herself such a weakness before us, told me very +solemnly and slowly, as if to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter, +that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the next day. + +And an awful step it was in her eyes, as she laid her hands on my head and +murmured to herself, "Behold, I send you forth as a lamb in the midst of +wolves. Be ye, therefore, wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." And +then, rising hastily to conceal her own emotion, fled upstairs, where +we could hear her throw herself on her knees by the bedside, and sob +piteously. + +That evening was spent dolefully enough, in a sermon of warnings against +all manner of sins and temptations, the very names of which I had never +heard, but to which, as she informed me, I was by my fallen nature +altogether prone: and right enough was she in so saying, though as often +happens, the temptations from which I was in real danger were just the ones +of which she had no notion--fighting more or less extinct Satans, as Mr. +Carlyle says, and quite unconscious of the real, modern, man-devouring +Satan close at her elbow. + +To me, in spite of all the terror which she tried to awaken in me, the +change was not unwelcome; at all events, it promised me food for my eyes +and my ears,--some escape from the narrow cage in which, though I hardly +dare confess it to myself, I was beginning to pine. Little I dreamt to what +a darker cage I was to be translated! Not that I accuse my uncle of neglect +or cruelty, though the thing was altogether of his commanding. He was as +generous to us as society required him to be. We were entirely dependent on +him, as my mother told me then for the first time, for support. And had he +not a right to dispose of my person, having bought it by an allowance to my +mother of five-and-twenty pounds a year? I did not forget that fact; the +thought of my dependence on him rankled in me, till it almost bred hatred +in me to a man who had certainly never done or meant anything to me but in +kindness. For what could he make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale, +consumptive, rickety, weakly boy, all forehead and no muscle--have not +clothes and shoes been from time immemorial the appointed work of such? The +fact that that weakly frame is generally compensated by a proportionally +increased activity of brain, is too unimportant to enter into the +calculations of the great King Laissez-faire. Well, my dear Society, it is +you that suffer for the mistake, after all, more than we. If you do tether +your cleverest artisans on tailors' shopboards and cobblers' benches, +and they--as sedentary folk will--fall a thinking, and come to strange +conclusions thereby, they really ought to be much more thankful to you than +you are to them. If Thomas Cooper had passed his first five-and-twenty +years at the plough tail instead of the shoemaker's awl, many words would +have been left unsaid which, once spoken, working men are not likely to +forget. + +With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's side next day to Mr. +Smith's shop, in a street off Piccadilly; and stood by her side, just +within the door, waiting till some one would condescend to speak to us, and +wondering when the time would come when I, like the gentleman who skipped +up and down the shop, should shine glorious in patent-leather boots, and a +blue satin tie sprigged with gold. + +Two personages, both equally magnificent, stood talking with their backs +to us; and my mother, in doubt, like myself, as to which of them was the +tailor, at last summoned up courage to address the wrong one, by asking if +he were Mr. Smith. + +The person addressed answered by a most polite smile and bow, and assured +her that he had not that honour; while the other he-he'ed, evidently a +little flattered by the mistake, and then uttered in a tremendous voice +these words: + +"I have nothing for you, my good woman--go. Mr. Elliot! how did you come to +allow these people to get into the establishment?" + +"My name is Locke, sir, and I was to bring my son here this morning." + +"Oh--ah!--Mr. Elliot, see to these persons. As I was saying, my lard, +the crimson velvet suit, about thirty-five guineas. By-the-by, that coat +ours? I thought so--idea grand and light--masses well broken--very fine +chiaroscuro about the whole--an aristocratic wrinkle just above the +hips--which I flatter myself no one but myself and my friend Mr. Cooke +really do understand. The vapid smoothness of the door dummy, my lard, +should be confined to the regions of the Strand. Mr. Elliot, where are you? +Just be so good as to show his lardship that lovely new thing in drab and +_blue fonce_. Ah! your lardship can't wait.--Now, my good woman, is this +the young man?" + +"Yes," said my mother: "and--and--God deal so with you, sir, as you deal +with the widow and the orphan." + +"Oh--ah--that will depend very much, I should say, on how the widow and +the orphan deal with me. Mr. Elliot, take this person into the office +and transact the little formalities with her, Jones, take the young man +up-stairs to the work-room." + +I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we +emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. +I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to +work--perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the +combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet +sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new +cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of +thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look +of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight +closed to keep out the cold winter air; and the condensed breath ran in +streams down the panes, chequering the dreary outlook of chimney-tops and +smoke. The conductor handed me over to one of the men. + +"Here, Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him +next you, and prick him up with your needle if he shirks." + +He disappeared down the trap-door, and mechanically, as if in a dream, +I sat down by the man and listened to his instructions, kindly enough +bestowed. But I did not remain in peace two minutes. A burst of chatter +rose as the foreman vanished, and a tall, bloated, sharp-nosed young man +next me bawled in my ear,-- + +"I say, young'un, fork out the tin and pay your footing at Conscrumption +Hospital." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Aint he just green?--Down with the stumpy--a tizzy for a pot of +half-and-half." + +"I never drink beer." + +"Then never do," whispered the man at my side; "as sure as hell's hell, +it's your only chance." + +There was a fierce, deep earnestness in the tone which made me look up at +the speaker, but the other instantly chimed in-- + +"Oh, yer don't, don't yer, my young Father Mathy? then yer'll soon learn it +here if yer want to keep yer victuals down." + +"And I have promised to take my wages home to my mother." + +"Oh criminy! hark to that, my coves! here's a chap as is going to take the +blunt home to his mammy." + +"T'aint much of it the old'un'll see," said another. "Ven yer pockets it +at the Cock and Bottle, my kiddy, yer won't find much of it left o' Sunday +mornings." + +"Don't his mother know he's out?" asked another, "and won't she know it-- + + "Ven he's sitting in his glory + Half-price at the Victory. + +"Oh! no, ve never mentions her--her name is never heard. Certainly not, by +no means. Why should it?" + +"Well, if yer won't stand a pot," quoth the tall man, "I will, that's all, +and blow temperance. 'A short life and a merry one,' says the tailor-- + + "The ministers talk a great deal about port, + And they makes Cape wine very dear, + But blow their hi's if ever they tries + To deprive a poor cove of his beer. + +"Here, Sam, run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of half-and-half to my +score." + +A thin, pale lad jumped up and vanished, while my tormentor turned to me: + +"I say, young'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our +neighbours?" + +"I shouldn't have thought so," answered I with a _naivete_ which raised a +laugh, and dashed the tall man for a moment. + +"Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. A cause we're a top of the house in the +first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer +worked in the room below. Aint that logic and science, Orator?" appealing +to Crossthwaite. + +"Why?" asked I. + +"A cause you get all the other floors' stinks up here as well as your +own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a +breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. +Ground-floor's Fever Ward--them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and +them as don't get dysentery gets typhus--your nose'd tell yer why if you +opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now +through the cracks in the boards, a puffing away like a nest of young +locomotives? And this here most august and upper-crust cockloft is the +Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds +to expectorate--spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for +nothing--fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor-- + + "Then your cheeks they grows red, and your nose it grows thin, + And your bones they stick out, till they comes through your skin: + +"and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare +backs of the hairystocracy-- + + "Die, die, die, + Away you fly, + Your soul is in the sky! + +"as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks." + +And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended +to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while +poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees. + +"Fine him a pot!" roared one, "for talking about kicking the bucket. He's +a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and talk about 'a short life +and a merry one.' Here comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of +that fellow's talk out of my mouth." + +"Well, my young'un," recommenced my tormentor, "and how do you like your +company?" + +"Leave the boy alone," growled Crossthwaite; "don't you see he's crying?" + +"Is that anything good to eat? Give me some on it if it is--it'll save me +washing my face." And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back. + +"I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes," said Crossthwaite, in a voice which +made him draw back, "if you don't drop that, I'll give you such a taste of +my tongue as shall turn you blue." + +"You'd better try it on then. Do--only just now--if you please." + +"Be quiet, you fool!" said another. "You're a pretty fellow to chaff the +orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on." + +"Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling," cried another; and the bully +subsided into a minute's silence, after a _sotto voce_--"Blow temperance, +and blow all Chartists, say I!" and then delivered himself of his feelings +in a doggerel song: + + "Some folks leads coves a dance, + With their pledge of temperance, + And their plans for donkey sociation; + And their pockets full they crams + By their patriotic flams, + And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation. + + "But I don't care two inions + For political opinions, + While I can stand my heavy and my quartern; + For to drown dull care within, + In baccy, beer, and gin, + Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin! + +"There's common sense for yer now; hand the pot here." + +I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent myself to my work +with assiduity enough to earn praises from Crossthwaite. It was to be done, +and I did it. The only virtue I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the +power of absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment, +however dull or trivial, if there be good reason why it should be pursued +at all. + +I owe, too, an apology to my readers for introducing all this ribaldry. God +knows, it is as little to my taste as it can be to theirs, but the thing +exists; and those who live, if not by, yet still besides such a state of +things, ought to know what the men are like to whose labour, ay, lifeblood, +they own their luxuries. They are "their brothers' keepers," let them deny +it as they will. Thank God, many are finding that out; and the morals of +the working tailors, as well as of other classes of artisans, are rapidly +improving: a change which has been brought about partly by the wisdom +and kindness of a few master tailors, who have built workshops fit for +human beings, and have resolutely stood out against the iniquitous and +destructive alterations in the system of employment. Among them I may, and +will, whether they like it or not, make honourable mention of Mr. Willis, +of St. James's Street, and Mr. Stultz, of Bond Street. + +But nine-tenths of the improvement has been owing, not to the masters, but +to the men themselves; and who among them, my aristocratic readers, do you +think, have been the great preachers and practisers of temperance, thrift, +charity, self-respect, and education. Who?--shriek not in your Belgravian +saloons--the Chartists; the communist Chartists: upon whom you and your +venal press heap every kind of cowardly execration and ribald slander. You +have found out many things since Peterloo; add that fact to the number. + +It may seem strange that I did not tell my mother into what a pandemonium +I had fallen, and got her to deliver me; but a delicacy, which was not +all evil, kept me back; I shrank from seeming to dislike to earn my daily +bread, and still more from seeming to object to what she had appointed for +me. Her will had been always law; it seemed a deadly sin to dispute it. I +took for granted, too, that she knew what the place was like, and that, +therefore, it must be right for me. And when I came home at night, and +got back to my beloved missionary stories, I gathered materials enough +to occupy my thoughts during the next day's work, and make me blind and +deaf to all the evil around me. My mother, poor dear creature, would have +denounced my day-dreams sternly enough, had she known of their existence; +but were they not holy angels from heaven? guardians sent by that Father, +whom I had been taught _not_ to believe in, to shield my senses from +pollution? + +I was ashamed, too, to mention to my mother the wickedness which I saw +and heard. With the delicacy of an innocent boy, I almost imputed the +very witnessing of it as a sin to myself; and soon I began to be ashamed +of more than the mere sitting by and hearing. I found myself gradually +learning slang-insolence, laughing at coarse jokes, taking part in angry +conversations; my moral tone was gradually becoming lower; but yet the +habit of prayer remained, and every night at my bedside, when I prayed to +"be converted and made a child of God," I prayed that the same mercy might +be extended to my fellow-workmen, "if they belonged to the number of the +elect." Those prayers may have been answered in a wider and deeper sense +than I then thought of. + +But, altogether, I felt myself in a most distracted, rudderless state. My +mother's advice I felt daily less and less inclined to ask. A gulf was +opening between us; we were moving in two different worlds, and she saw +it, and imputed it to me as a sin; and was the more cold to me by day, and +prayed for me (as I knew afterwards) the more passionately while I slept. +But help or teacher I had none. I knew not that I had a Father in heaven. +How could He be my Father till I was converted? I was a child of the Devil, +they told me; and now and then I felt inclined to take them at their word, +and behave like one. No sympathizing face looked on me out of the wide +heaven--off the wide earth, none. I was all boiling with new hopes, new +temptations, new passions, new sorrows, and "I looked to the right hand and +to the left, and no man cared for my soul." + +I had felt myself from the first strangely drawn towards Crossthwaite, +carefully as he seemed to avoid me, except to give me business directions +in the workroom. He alone had shown me any kindness; and he, too, alone was +untainted with the sin around him. Silent, moody, and preoccupied, he was +yet the king of the room. His opinion was always asked, and listened to. +His eye always cowed the ribald and the blasphemer; his songs, when he +rarely broke out into merriment, were always rapturously applauded. Men +hated, and yet respected him. I shrank from him at first, when I heard +him called a Chartist; for my dim notions of that class were, that they +were a very wicked set of people, who wanted to kill all the soldiers and +policemen and respectable people, and rob all the shops of their contents. +But, Chartist or none, Crossthwaite fascinated me. I often found myself +neglecting my work to study his face. I liked him, too, because he was as I +was--small, pale, and weakly. He might have been five-and-twenty; but his +looks, like those of too many a working man, were rather those of a man +of forty. Wild grey eyes gleamed out from under huge knitted brows, and a +perpendicular wall of brain, too large for his puny body. He was not only, +I soon discovered, a water-drinker, but a strict "vegetarian" also; to +which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, +volubility, and sensitiveness of his mind. But whether from his ascetic +habits, or the un-healthiness of his trade, the marks of ill-health were +upon him; and his sallow cheek, and ever-working lip, proclaimed too +surely-- + + The fiery soul which, working out its way, + Fretted the pigmy body to decay; + And o'er informed the tenement of clay. + +I longed to open my heart to him. Instinctively I felt that he was a +kindred spirit. Often, turning round suddenly in the workroom, I caught him +watching me with an expression which seemed to say, "Poor boy, and art thou +too one of us? Hast thou too to fight with poverty and guidelessness, and +the cravings of an unsatisfied intellect, as I have done!" But when I tried +to speak to him earnestly, his manner was peremptory and repellent. It was +well for me that so it was--well for me, I see now, that it was not from +him my mind received the first lessons in self-development. For guides did +come to me in good time, though not such, perhaps, as either my mother or +my readers would have chosen for me. + +My great desire now was to get knowledge. By getting that I fancied, as +most self-educated men are apt to do, 1 should surely get wisdom. Books, I +thought, would tell me all I needed. But where to get the books? And which? +I had exhausted our small stock at home; I was sick and tired, without +knowing why, of their narrow conventional view of everything. After all, +I had been reading them all along, not for their doctrines but for their +facts, and knew not where to find more, except in forbidden paths. I dare +not ask my mother for books, for I dare not confess to her that religious +ones were just what I did not want; and all history, poetry, science, I had +been accustomed to hear spoken of as "carnal learning, human philosophy," +more or less diabolic and ruinous to the soul. So, as usually happens +in this life--"By the law was the knowledge of sin"--and unnatural +restrictions on the development of the human spirit only associated with +guilt of conscience, what ought to have been an innocent and necessary +blessing. + +My poor mother, not singular in her mistake, had sent me forth, out of an +unconscious paradise into the evil world, without allowing me even the sad +strength which comes from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; +she expected in me the innocence of the dove, as if that was possible on +such an earth as this, without the wisdom of the serpent to support it. She +forbade me strictly to stop and look into the windows of print shops, and +I strictly obeyed her. But she forbade me, too, to read any book which I +had not first shown her; and that restriction, reasonable enough in the +abstract, practically meant, in the case of a poor boy like myself, reading +no books at all. And then came my first act of disobedience, the parent of +many more. Bitterly have I repented it, and bitterly been punished. Yet, +strange contradiction! I dare not wish it undone. But such is the great law +of life. Punished for our sins we surely are; and yet how often they become +our blessings, teaching us that which nothing else can teach us! Nothing +else? One says so. Rich parents, I suppose, say so, when they send their +sons to public schools "to learn life." We working men have too often no +other teacher than our own errors. But surely, surely, the rich ought to +have been able to discover some mode of education in which knowledge may be +acquired without the price of conscience, Yet they have not; and we must +not complain of them for not giving such a one to the working man when they +have not yet even given it to their own children. + +In a street through which I used to walk homeward was an old book shop, +piled and fringed outside and in with books of every age, size, and colour. +And here I at last summoned courage to stop, and timidly and stealthily +taking out some volume whose title attracted me, snatch hastily a few pages +and hasten on, half fearful of being called on to purchase, half ashamed of +a desire which I fancied every one else considered as unlawful as my mother +did. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find the same volume several days +running, and to take up the subject where I had left it off; and thus I +contrived to hurry through a great deal of "Childe Harold," "Lara," and the +"Corsair"--a new world of wonders to me. They fed, those poems, both my +health and my diseases; while they gave me, little of them as I could +understand, a thousand new notions about scenery and man, a sense of poetic +melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown. They chimed in with all +my discontent, my melancholy, my thirst after any life of action and +excitement, however frivolous, insane, or even worse. I forgot the +Corsair's sinful trade in his free and daring life; rather, I honestly +eliminated the bad element--in which, God knows, I took no delight--and +kept the good one. However that might be, the innocent--guilty pleasure +grew on me day by day. Innocent, because human--guilty, because +disobedient. But have I not paid the penalty? + +One evening, however, I fell accidentally on a new book--"The Life and +Poems of J. Bethune." I opened the story of his life--became interested, +absorbed--and there I stood, I know not how long, on the greasy pavement, +heedless of the passers who thrust me right and left, reading by the +flaring gas-light that sad history of labour, sorrow, and death.--How +the Highland cotter, in spite of disease, penury, starvation itself, and +the daily struggle to earn his bread by digging and ditching, educated +himself--how he toiled unceasingly with his hands--how he wrote his poems +in secret on dirty scraps of paper and old leaves of books--how thus he +wore himself out, manful and godly, "bating not a jot of heart or hope," +till the weak flesh would bear no more; and the noble spirit, unrecognized +by the lord of the soil, returned to God who gave it. I seemed to see in +his history a sad presage of my own. If he, stronger, more self-restrained, +more righteous far than ever I could be, had died thus unknown, unassisted, +in the stern battle with social disadvantages, what must be my lot? + +And tears of sympathy, rather than of selfish fear, fell fast upon the +book. + +A harsh voice from the inner darkness of the shop startled me. + +"Hoot, laddie, ye'll better no spoil my books wi' greeting ower them." + +I replaced the book hastily, and was hurrying on, but the same voice called +me back in a more kindly tone. + +"Stop a wee, my laddie. I'm no angered wi' ye. Come in, and we'll just ha' +a bit crack thegither." + +I went in, for there was a geniality in the tone to which I was +unaccustomed, and something whispered to me the hope of an adventure, as +indeed it proved to be, if an event deserves that name which decided the +course of my whole destiny. + +"What war ye greeting about, then? What was the book?" + +"'Bethune's Life and Poems,' sir," I said. "And certainly they did affect +me very much." + +"Affect ye? Ah, Johnnie Bethune, puir fellow! Ye maunna take on about sic +like laddies, or ye'll greet your e'en out o' your head. It's mony a braw +man beside Johnnie Bethune has gane Johnnie-Bethune's gate." + +Though unaccustomed to the Scotch accent, I could make out enough of +this speech to be in nowise consoled by it. But the old man turned the +conversation by asking me abruptly my name, and trade, and family. + +"Hum, hum, widow, eh? puir body! work at Smith's shop, eh? Ye'll ken John +Crossthwaite, then? ay? hum, hum; an' ye're desirous o' reading books? vara +weel--let's see your cawpabilities." + +And he pulled me into the dim light of the little back window, shoved back +his spectacles, and peering at me from underneath them, began, to my great +astonishment, to feel my head all over. + +"Hum, hum, a vara gude forehead--vara gude indeed. Causative organs large, +perceptive ditto. Imagination superabundant--mun be heeded. Benevolence, +conscientiousness, ditto, ditto. Caution--no that large--might be +developed," with a quiet chuckle, "under a gude Scot's education. Just turn +your head into profile, laddie. Hum, hum. Back o' the head a'thegither +defective. Firmness sma'--love of approbation unco big. Beware o' leeing, +as ye live; ye'll need it. Philoprogenitiveness gude. Ye'll be fond o' +bairns, I'm guessing?" + +"Of what?" + +"Children, laddie,--children." + +"Very," answered I, in utter dismay at what seemed to me a magical process +for getting at all my secret failings. + +"Hum, hum! Amative and combative organs sma'--a general want o' healthy +animalism, as my freen' Mr. Deville wad say. And ye want to read books?" + +I confessed my desire, without, alas! confessing that my mother had +forbidden it. + +"Vara weel; then books I'll lend ye, after I've had a crack wi' +Crossthwaite aboot ye, gin I find his opinion o' ye satisfactory. Come +to me the day after to-morrow. An' mind, here are my rules:--a' damage +done to a book to be paid for, or na mair books lent; ye'll mind to +take no books without leave; specially ye'll mind no to read in bed o' +nights,--industrious folks ought to be sleeping' betimes, an' I'd no be a +party to burning puir weans in their beds; and lastly, ye'll observe not to +read mair than five books at once." + +I assured him that I thought such a thing impossible; but he smiled in his +saturnine way, and said-- + +"We'll see this day fortnight. Now, then, I've observed ye for a month past +over that aristocratic Byron's poems. And I'm willing to teach the young +idea how to shoot--but no to shoot itself; so ye'll just leave alane that +vinegary, soul-destroying trash, and I'll lend ye, gin I hear a gude report +of ye, 'The Paradise Lost,' o' John Milton--a gran' classic model; and +for the doctrine o't, it's just aboot as gude as ye'll hear elsewhere the +noo. So gang your gate, and tell John Crossthwaite, privately, auld Sandy +Mackaye wad like to see him the morn's night." + +I went home in wonder and delight. Books! books! books! I should have my +fill of them at last. And when I said my prayers at night, I thanked God +for this unexpected boon; and then remembered that my mother had forbidden +it. That thought checked the thanks, but not the pleasure. Oh, parents! are +there not real sins enough in the world already, without your defiling it, +over and above, by inventing new ones? + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +SANDY MACKAYE. + + +That day fortnight came,--and the old Scotchman's words came true. Four +books of his I had already, and I came in to borrow a fifth; whereon he +began with a solemn chuckle: + +"Eh, laddie, laddie, I've been treating ye as the grocers do their new +prentices. They first gie the boys three days' free warren among the figs +and the sugar-candy, and they get scunnered wi' sweets after that. Noo, +then, my lad, ye've just been reading four books in three days--and here's +a fifth. Ye'll no open this again." + +"Oh!" I cried, piteously enough, "just let me finish what I am reading. I'm +in the middle of such a wonderful account of the Hornitos of Jurullo." + +"Hornets or wasps, a swarm o' them ye're like to have at this rate; and +a very bad substitute ye'll find them for the Attic bee. Now tak' tent. +I'm no in the habit of speaking without deliberation, for it saves a man +a great deal of trouble in changing his mind. If ye canna traduce to me +a page o' Virgil by this day three months, ye read no more o' my books. +Desultory reading is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with self-restraint +and method, my man, gin ye intend to gie yoursel' a liberal education. So +I'll just mak' you a present of an auld Latin grammar, and ye maun begin +where your betters ha' begun before you." + +"But who will teach me Latin?" + +"Hoot, man! who'll teach a man anything except himsel'? It's only +gentlefolks and puir aristocrat bodies that go to be spoilt wi' tutors and +pedagogues, cramming and loading them wi' knowledge, as ye'd load a gun, to +shoot it all out again, just as it went down, in a college examination, and +forget all aboot it after." + +"Ah!" I sighed, "if I could have gone to college!" + +"What for, then? My father was a Hieland farmer, and yet he was a weel +learned man: and 'Sandy, my lad,' he used to say, 'a man kens just as +much as he's taught himsel', and na mair. So get wisdom; and wi' all your +getting, get understanding.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek exercise +I've written in the cowbyres. And mony's the page o' Virgil, too, I've +turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane that's dead and gane, poor hizzie, +sitting under the same plaid, with the sheep feeding round us, up among +the hills, looking out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee haven wi' the +fishing cobles--" + +There was a long solemn pause. I cannot tell why, but I loved the man from +that moment; and I thought, too, that he began to love me. Those few words +seemed a proof of confidence, perhaps all the deeper, because accidental +and unconscious. + +I took the Virgil which he lent me, with Hamilton's literal translation +between the lines, and an old tattered Latin grammar; I felt myself quite +a learned man--actually the possessor of a Latin book! I regarded as +something almost miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition. +Not that I was consciously, much less selfishly, ambitious. I had no idea +as yet to be anything but a tailor to the end; to make clothes--perhaps in +a less infernal atmosphere--but still to make clothes and live thereby. I +did not suspect that I possessed powers above the mass. My intense longing +after knowledge had been to me like a girl's first love--a thing to be +concealed from every eye--to be looked at askance even by myself, delicious +as it was, with holy shame and trembling. And thus it was not cowardice +merely, but natural modesty, which put me on a hundred plans of concealing +my studies from my mother, and even from my sister. + +I slept in a little lean-to garret at the back of the house, some ten feet +long by six wide. I could just stand upright against the inner wall, while +the roof on the other side ran down to the floor. There was no fireplace in +it, or any means of ventilation. No wonder I coughed all night accordingly, +and woke about two every morning with choking throat and aching head. My +mother often said that the room was "too small for a Christian to sleep in, +but where could she get a better?" + +Such was my only study. I could not use it as such, however, at night +without discovery; for my mother carefully looked in every evening, to +see that my candle was out. But when my kind cough woke me, I rose, and +creeping like a mouse about the room--for my mother and sister slept in the +next chamber, and every sound was audible through the narrow partition--I +drew my darling books out from under a board of the floor, one end of which +I had gradually loosened at odd minutes, and with them a rushlight, earned +by running on messages, or by taking bits of work home, and finishing them +for my fellows. + +No wonder that with this scanty rest, and this complicated exertion of +hands, eyes, and brain, followed by the long dreary day's work of the shop, +my health began to fail; my eyes grew weaker and weaker; my cough became +more acute; my appetite failed me daily. My mother noticed the change, +and questioned me about it, affectionately enough. But I durst not, alas! +tell the truth. It was not one offence, but the arrears of months of +disobedience which I should have had to confess; and so arose infinite +false excuses, and petty prevarications, which embittered and clogged still +more my already overtasked spirit. About my own ailments--formidable as +I believed they were--I never had a moment's anxiety. The expectation of +early death was as unnatural to me as it is, I suspect, to almost all. I +die? Had I not hopes, plans, desires, infinite? Could I die while they were +unfulfilled? Even now, I do not believe I shall die yet. I will not believe +it--but let that pass. + +Yes, let that pass. Perhaps I have lived long enough--longer than many a +grey-headed man. + + There is a race of mortals who become + Old in their youth, and die ere middle age. + +And might not those days of mine then have counted as months?--those days +when, before starting forth to walk two miles to the shop at six o'clock in +the morning, I sat some three or four hours shivering on my bed, putting +myself into cramped and painful postures, not daring even to cough, lest my +mother should fancy me unwell, and come in to see me, poor dear soul!--my +eyes aching over the page, my feet wrapped up in the bedclothes, to keep +them from the miserable pain of the cold; longing, watching, dawn after +dawn, for the kind summer mornings, when I should need no candlelight. +Look at the picture awhile, ye comfortable folks, who take down from your +shelves what books you like best at the moment, and then lie back, amid +prints and statuettes, to grow wise in an easy-chair, with a blazing fire +and a camphine lamp. The lower classes uneducated! Perhaps you would be so +too, if learning cost you the privation which it costs some of them. + +But this concealment could not last. My only wonder is, that I continued to +get whole months of undiscovered study. One morning, about four o'clock, as +might have been expected, my mother heard me stirring, came in, and found +me sitting crosslegged on my bed, stitching away, indeed, with all my +might, but with a Virgil open before me. + +She glanced at the book, clutched it with one hand and my arm with the +other, and sternly asked, + +"Where did you get this heathen stuff?" + +A lie rose to my lips; but I had been so gradually entangled in the loathed +meshes of a system of concealment, and consequent prevarication, that +I felt as if one direct falsehood would ruin for ever my fast-failing +self-respect, and I told her the whole truth. She took the book and left +the room. It was Saturday morning, and I spent two miserable days, for she +never spoke a word to me till the two ministers had made their appearance, +and drank their tea on Sunday evening: then at last she opened: + +"And now, Mr. Wigginton, what account have you of this Mr. Mackaye, who has +seduced my unhappy boy from the paths of obedience?" + +"I am sorry to say, madam," answered the dark man, with a solemn snuffle, +"that he proves to be a most objectionable and altogether unregenerate +character. He is, as I am informed, neither more nor less than a Chartist, +and an open blasphemer." + +"He is not!" I interrupted, angrily. "He has told me more about God, and +given me better advice, than any human being, except my mother." + +"Ah! madam, so thinks the unconverted heart, ignorant that the god of the +Deist is not the God of the Bible--a consuming fire to all but His beloved +elect; the god of the Deist, unhappy youth, is a mere self-invented, +all-indulgent phantom--a will-o'-the-wisp, deluding the unwary, as he has +deluded you, into the slough of carnal reason and shameful profligacy." + +"Do you mean to call me a profligate?" I retorted fiercely, for my blood +was up, and I felt I was fighting for all which I prized in the world: +"if you do, you lie. Ask my mother when I ever disobeyed her before? I +have never touched a drop of anything stronger than water; I have slaved +over-hours to pay for my own candle, I have!--I have no sins to accuse +myself of, and neither you nor any person know of any. Do you call me a +profligate because I wish to educate myself and rise in life?" + +"Ah!" groaned my poor mother to herself, "still unconvinced of sin!" + +"The old Adam, my dear madam, you see,--standing, as he always does, on his +own filthy rags of works, while all the imaginations of his heart are only +evil continually. Listen to me, poor sinner--" + +"I will not listen to you," I cried, the accumulated disgust of years +bursting out once and for all, "for I hate and despise you, eating my poor +mother here out of house and home. You are one of those who creep into +widows' houses, and for pretence make long prayers. You, sir, I will hear," +I went on, turning to the dear old man who had sat by shaking his white +locks with a sad and puzzled air, "for I love you." + +"My dear sister Locke," he began, "I really think sometimes--that is, +ahem--with your leave, brother--I am almost disposed--but I should wish to +defer to your superior zeal--yet, at the same time, perhaps, the desire for +information, however carnal in itself, may be an instrument in the Lord's +hands--you know what I mean. I always thought him a gracious youth, madam, +didn't you? And perhaps--I only observe it in passing--the Lord's people +among the dissenting connexions are apt to undervalue human learning as a +means--of course, I mean, only as a means. It is not generally known, I +believe, that our reverend Puritan patriarchs, Howe and Baxter, Owen and +many more, were not altogether unacquainted with heathen authors; nay, that +they may have been called absolutely learned men. And some of our leading +ministers are inclined--no doubt they will be led rightly in so important +a matter--to follow the example of the Independents in educating their +young ministers, and turning Satan's weapons of heathen mythology against +himself, as St. Paul is said to have done. My dear boy, what books have you +now got by you of Mr. Mackaye's?" + +"Milton's Poems and a Latin Virgil." + +"Ah!" groaned the dark man; "will poetry, will Latin save an immortal +soul?" + +"I'll tell you what, sir; you say yourself that it depends on God's +absolute counsel whether I am saved or not. So, if I am elect, I shall be +saved whatever I do; and if I am not, I shall be damned whatever I do; and +in the mean time you had better mind your own business, and let me do the +best I can for this life, as the next is all settled for me." + +This flippant, but after all not unreasonable speech, seemed to silence the +man; and I took the opportunity of running up-stairs and bringing down my +Milton. The old man was speaking as I re-entered. + +"And you know, my dear madam, Mr. Milton was a true converted man, and a +Puritan." + +"He was Oliver Cromwell's secretary," I added. + +"Did he teach you to disobey your mother?" asked my mother. + +I did not answer; and the old man, after turning over a few leaves, as if +he knew the book well, looked up. + +"I think, madam, you might let the youth keep these books, if he will +promise, as I am sure he will, to see no more of Mr. Mackaye." + +I was ready to burst out crying, but I made up my mind and answered, + +"I must see him once again, or he will think me so ungrateful. He is the +best friend that I ever had, except you, mother. Besides, I do not know if +he will lend me any, after this." + +My mother looked at the old minister, and then gave a sullen assent. + +"Promise me only to see him once--but I cannot trust you. You have deceived +me once, Alton, and you may again!" + +"I shall not, I shall not," I answered proudly. "You do not know me"--and I +spoke true. + +"You do not know yourself, my poor dear foolish child!" she replied--and +that was true too. + +"And now, dear friends," said the dark man, "let us join in offering up a +few words of special intercession." + +We all knelt down, and I soon discovered that by the special intercession +was meant a string of bitter and groundless slanders against poor me, +twisted into the form of a prayer for my conversion, "if it were God's +will." To which I responded with a closing "Amen," for which I was sorry +afterwards, when I recollected that it was said in merely insolent mockery. +But the little faith I had was breaking up fast--not altogether, surely, by +my own fault. [Footnote: The portraits of the minister and the missionary +are surely exceptions to their class, rather than the average. The Baptists +have had their Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall, and among missionaries Dr. +Carey, and noble spirits in plenty. But such men as those who excited +Alton Locke's disgust are to be met with, in every sect; in the Church of +England, and in the Church of Rome. And it is a real and fearful scandal +to the young, to see such men listened to as God's messengers, in spite +of their utter want of any manhood or virtue, simply because they are +"orthodox," each according to the shibboleths of his hearers, and possess +that vulpine "discretion of dulness," whose miraculous might Dean Swift +sets forth in his "Essay on the Fates of Clergymen." Such men do exist, and +prosper; and as long as they are allowed to do so, Alton Lockes will meet +them, and be scandalized by them.--ED.] + +At all events, from that day I was emancipated from modern Puritanism. The +ministers both avoided all serious conversation with me; and my mother +did the same; while, with a strength of mind, rare among women, she never +alluded to the scene of that Sunday evening. It was a rule with her never +to recur to what was once done and settled. What was to be, might be prayed +over. But it was to be endured in silence; yet wider and wider ever from +that time opened the gulf between us. + +I went trembling the next afternoon to Mackaye and told my story. He first +scolded me severely for disobeying my mother. "He that begins o' that gate, +laddie, ends by disobeying God and his ain conscience. Gin ye're to be a +scholar, God will make you one--and if not, ye'll no mak' yoursel' ane +in spite o' Him and His commandments." And then he filled his pipe and +chuckled away in silence; at last he exploded in a horse-laugh. + +"So ye gied the ministers a bit o' yer mind? 'The deil's amang the tailors' +in gude earnest, as the sang says. There's Johnnie Crossthwaite kicked the +Papist priest out o' his house yestreen. Puir ministers, it's ill times wi' +them! They gang about keckling and screighing after the working men, like +a hen that's hatched ducklings, when she sees them tak' the water. Little +Dunkeld's coming to London sune, I'm thinking. + + "Hech! sic a parish, a parish, a parish; + Hech! sic a parish as little Dunkeld! + They hae stickit the minister, hanged the precentor, + Dung down the steeple, and drucken the bell." + +"But may I keep the books a little while, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Keep them till ye die, gin ye will. What is the worth o' them to me? What +is the worth o' anything to me, puir auld deevil, that ha' no half a dizen +years to live at the furthest. God bless ye, my bairn; gang hame, and mind +your mither, or it's little gude books'll do ye." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +TAILORS AND SOLDIERS. + + +I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources. I read and re-read +Milton's "Poems" and Virgil's "AEneid" for six more months at every spare +moment; thus spending over them, I suppose, all in all, far more time than +most gentlemen have done. I found, too, in the last volume of Milton, a few +of his select prose works: the "Areopagitica," the "Defence of the English +People," and one or two more, in which I gradually began to take an +interest; and, little of them as I could comprehend, I was awed by their +tremendous depth and power, as well as excited by the utterly new trains of +thought into which they led me. Terrible was the amount of bodily fatigue +which I had to undergo in reading at every spare moment, while walking to +and fro from my work, while sitting up, often from midnight till dawn, +stitching away to pay for the tallow-candle which I burnt, till I had to +resort to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself awake, +even at the expense of bodily pain--Heaven forbid that I should weary +my readers by describing them! Young men of the upper classes, to whom +study--pursue it as intensely as you will--is but the business of the day, +and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery +undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,--to live +at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,--to bring to the +self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already +worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. God forbid, though, +that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, +with still fewer advantages than mine. Hundreds more, an ever-increasing +army of martyrs, are doing it at this moment: of some of them, too, perhaps +you may hear hereafter. + +I had read through Milton, as I said, again and again; I had got out of +him all that my youth and my unregulated mind enabled me to get. I had +devoured, too, not without profit, a large old edition of "Fox's Martyrs," +which the venerable minister lent me, and now I was hungering again for +fresh food, and again at a loss where to find it. + +I was hungering, too, for more than information--for a friend. Since my +intercourse with Sandy Mackaye had been stopped, six months had passed +without my once opening my lips to any human being upon the subjects with +which my mind was haunted day and night. I wanted to know more about +poetry, history, politics, philosophy--all things in heaven and earth. But, +above all, I wanted a faithful and sympathizing ear into which to pour all +my doubts, discontents, and aspirations. My sister Susan, who was one year +younger than myself, was growing into a slender, pretty, hectic girl of +sixteen. But she was altogether a devout Puritan. She had just gone through +the process of conviction of sin and conversion; and being looked upon +at the chapel as an especially gracious professor, was either unable or +unwilling to think or speak on any subject, except on those to which I +felt a growing distaste. She had shrunk from me, too, very much, since my +ferocious attack that Sunday evening on the dark minister, who was her +special favourite. I remarked it, and it was a fresh cause of unhappiness +and perplexity. + +At last I made up my mind, come what would, to force myself upon +Crossthwaite. He was the only man whom I knew who seemed able to help me; +and his very reserve had invested him with a mystery, which served to +heighten my imagination of his powers. I waylaid him one day coming out of +the workroom to go home, and plunged at once desperately into the matter. + +"Mr. Crossthwaite, I want to speak to you. I want to ask you to advise me." + +"I have known that a long time." + +"Then why did you never say a kind word to me?" + +"Because I was waiting to see whether you were worth saying a kind word to. +It was but the other day, remember, you were a bit of a boy. Now, I think, +I may trust you with a thing or two. Besides, I wanted to see whether you +trusted me enough to ask me. Now you've broke the ice at last, in with you, +head and ears, and see what you can fish out." + +"I am very unhappy--" + +"That's no new disorder that I know of." + +"No; but I think the reason I am unhappy is a strange one; at least, I +never read of but one person else in the same way. I want to educate +myself, and I can't." + +"You must have read precious little then, if you think yourself in a +strange way. Bless the boy's heart! And what the dickens do you want to be +educating yourself for, pray?" + +This was said in a tone of good-humoured banter, which gave me courage. He +offered to walk homewards with me; and, as I shambled along by his side, I +told him all my story and all my griefs. + +I never shall forget that walk. Every house, tree, turning, which we passed +that day on our way, is indissolubly connected in my mind with some strange +new thought which arose in me just at each spot; and recurs, so are the +mind and the senses connected, as surely as I repass it. + +I had been telling him about Sandy Mackaye. He confessed to an acquaintance +with him; but in a reserved and mysterious way, which only heightened my +curiosity. + +We were going through the Horse Guards, and I could not help lingering +to look with wistful admiration on the huge mustachoed war-machines who +sauntered about the court-yard. + +A tall and handsome officer, blazing in scarlet and gold, cantered in on a +superb horse, and, dismounting, threw the reins to a dragoon as grand and +gaudy as himself. Did I envy him? Well--I was but seventeen. And there is +something noble to the mind, as well as to the eye, in the great strong +man, who can fight--a completeness, a self-restraint, a terrible sleeping +power in him. As Mr. Carlyle says, "A soldier, after all, is--one of the +few remaining realities of the age. All other professions almost promise +one thing, and perform--alas! what? But this man promises to fight, and +does it; and, if he be told, will veritably take out a long sword and kill +me." + +So thought my companion, though the mood in which he viewed the fact was +somewhat different from my own. + +"Come on," he said, peevishly clutching me by the arm; "what do you want +dawdling? Are you a nursery-maid, that you must stare at those red-coated +butchers?" And a deep curse followed. + +"What harm have they done you?" + +"I should think I owed them turn enough." + +"What?" + +"They cut my father down at Sheffield,--perhaps with the very swords he +helped to make,--because he would not sit still and starve, and see us +starving around him, while those who fattened on the sweat of his brow, and +on those lungs of his, which the sword-grinding dust was eating out day by +day, were wantoning on venison and champagne. That's the harm they've done +me, my chap!" + +"Poor fellows!--they only did as they were ordered, I suppose." + +"And what business have they to let themselves be ordered? What right, I +say--what right has any free, reasonable soul on earth, to sell himself for +a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong--even his own brother +or his own father--just because such a whiskered, profligate jackanapes +as that officer, without learning, without any god except his own +looking-glass and his opera-dancer--a fellow who, just because he is born +a gentleman, is set to command grey-headed men before he can command his +own meanest passions. Good heavens! that the lives of free men should be +entrusted to such a stuffed cockatoo; and that free men should be such +traitors to their country, traitors to their own flesh and blood, as to +sell themselves, for a shilling a day and the smirks of the nursery-maids, +to do that fellow's bidding!" + +"What are you a-grumbling here about, my man?--gotten the cholera?" asked +one of the dragoons, a huge, stupid-looking lad. + +"About you, you young long-legged cut-throat," answered Crossthwaite, "and +all your crew of traitors." + +"Help, help, coomrades o' mine!" quoth the dragoon, bursting with laughter; +"I'm gaun be moorthered wi' a little booy that's gane mad, and toorned +Chartist." + +I dragged Crossthwaite off; for what was jest to the soldiers, I saw, by +his face, was fierce enough earnest to him. We walked on a little, in +silence. + +"Now," I said, "that was a good-natured fellow enough, though he was a +soldier. You and he might have cracked many a joke together, if you did but +understand each other;--and he was a countryman of yours, too." + +"I may crack something else besides jokes with him some day," answered he, +moodily. + +"'Pon my word, you must take care how you do it. He is as big as four of +us." + +"That vile aristocrat, the old Italian poet--what's his +name?--Ariosto--ay!--he knew which quarter the wind was making for, when he +said that fire-arms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen +in armour, that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep. +Gunpowder is your true leveller--dash physical strength! A boy's a man with +a musket in his hand, my chap!" + +"God forbid," I said, "that I should ever be made a man of in that way, or +you either. I do not think we are quite big enough to make fighters; and if +we were, what have we got to fight about?" + +"Big enough to make fighters?" said he, half to himself; "or strong enough, +perhaps?--or clever enough?--and yet Alexander was a little man, and the +Petit Caporal, and Nelson, and Caesar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, +and weakly he was into the bargain. AEsop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; +Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;--so +much for body _versus_ spirit--brute force _versus_ genius--genius." + +I looked at him; his eyes glared like two balls of fire. Suddenly he turned +to me. + +"Locke, my boy, I've made an ass of myself, and got into a rage, and broken +a good old resolution of mine, and a promise that I made to my dear little +woman--bless her! and said things to you that you ought to know nothing of +for this long time; but those red-coats always put me beside myself. God +forgive me!" And he held out his hand to me cordially. + +"I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point," I said, as I +took it, "after the sad story you told me; but why so bitter on all? What +is there so very wrong about things, that we must begin fighting about it?" + +"Bless your heart, poor innocent! What is wrong?--what is not wrong? Wasn't +there enough in that talk with Mackaye, that you told me of just now, to +show anybody that, who can tell a hawk from a hand-saw?" + +"Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about the education of a +poor young fellow, who has no tie on him, who can never repay him?" + +"No; that's just like him. He feels for the people, for he has been one of +us. He worked in a printing-office himself many a year, and he knows the +heart of the working man. But he didn't tell you the whole truth about +education. He daren't tell you. No one who has money dare speak out his +heart; not that he has much certainly; but the cunning old Scot that he is, +he lives by the present system of things, and he won't speak ill of the +bridge which carries him over--till the time comes." + +I could not understand whither all this tended, and walked on silent and +somewhat angry, at hearing the least slight cast on Mackaye. + +"Don't you see, stupid?" he broke out at last. "What did he say to you +about gentlemen being crammed by tutors and professors? Have not you as +good a right to them as any gentleman?" + +"But he told me they were no use--that every man must educate himself." + +"Oh! all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour, when you can't reach +them. Bah, lad! Can't you see what comes of education?--that any dolt, +provided he be a gentleman, can be doctored up at school and college, +enough to make him play his part decently--his mighty part of ruling us, +and riding over our heads, and picking our pockets, as parson, doctor, +lawyer, member of parliament--while we--you now, for instance--cleverer +than ninety-nine gentlemen out of a hundred, if you had one-tenth the +trouble taken with you that is taken with every pig-headed son of an +aristocrat--" + +"Am I clever?" asked I, in honest surprise. + +"What! haven't you found that out yet? Don't try to put that on me. Don't a +girl know when she's pretty, without asking her neighbours?" + +"Really, I never thought about it." + +"More simpleton you. Old Mackaye has, at all events; though, canny +Scotchman that he is, he'll never say a word to you about it, yet he makes +no secret of it to other people. I heard him the other day telling some of +our friends that you were a thorough young genius." + +I blushed scarlet, between pleasure and a new feeling; was it ambition? + +"Why, hav'n't you a right to aspire to a college education as any +do-nothing canon there at the abbey, lad?" + +"I don't know that I have a right to anything." + +"What, not become what Nature intended you to become? What has she given +you brains for, but to be educated and used? Oh! I heard a fine lecture +upon that at our club the other night. There was a man there--a gentleman, +too, but a thorough-going people's man, I can tell you, Mr. O'Flynn. What +an orator that man is to be sure! The Irish AEschines, I hear they call +him in Conciliation Hall. Isn't he the man to pitch into the Mammonites? +'Gentlemen and ladies,' says he, 'how long will a diabolic society'--no, an +effete society it was--'how long will an effete, emasculate, and effeminate +society, in the diabolic selfishness of its eclecticism, refuse to +acknowledge what my immortal countryman, Burke, calls the "Dei voluntatem +in rebus revelatam"--the revelation of Nature's will in the phenomena of +matter? The cerebration of each is the prophetic sacrament of the yet +undeveloped possibilities of his mentation. The form of the brain alone, +and not the possession of the vile gauds of wealth and rank, constitute +man's only right to education--to the glories of art and science. Those +beaming eyes and roseate lips beneath me proclaim a bevy of undeveloped +Aspasias, of embryo Cleopatras, destined by Nature, and only restrained by +man's injustice, from ruling the world by their beauty's eloquence. Those +massive and beetling brows, gleaming with the lambent flames of patriotic +ardour--what is needed to unfold them into a race of Shakspeares and of +Gracchi, ready to proclaim with sword and lyre the divine harmonies of +liberty, equality, and fraternity, before a quailing universe?'" + +"It sounds very grand," replied I, meekly; "and I should like very much +certainly to have a good education. But I can't see whose injustice keeps +me out of one if I can't afford to pay for it." + +"Whose? Why, the parson's to be sure. They've got the monopoly of education +in England, and they get their bread by it at their public schools and +universities; and of course it's their interest to keep up the price of +their commodity, and let no man have a taste of it who can't pay down +handsomely. And so those aristocrats of college dons go on rolling in +riches, and fellowships, and scholarships, that were bequeathed by the +people's friends in old times, just to educate poor scholars like you and +me, and give us our rights as free men." + +"But I thought the clergy were doing so much to educate the poor. At +least, I hear all the dissenting ministers grumbling at their continual +interference." + +"Ay, educating them to make them slaves and bigots. They don't teach them +what they teach their own sons. Look at the miserable smattering of general +information--just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last +lesson of 'Obey the powers that be'--whatever they be; leave us alone in +our comforts, and starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's +will. And then, if a boy does show talent in school, do they help him up +in life? Not they; when he has just learnt enough to whet his appetite for +more, they turn him adrift again, to sink and drudge--to do his duty, as +they call it, in that state of life to which society and the devil have +called him." + +"But there are innumerable stories of great Englishmen who have risen from +the lowest ranks." + +"Ay; but where are the stories of those who have not risen--of all the +noble geniuses who have ended in desperation, drunkenness, starvation, +suicide, because no one would take the trouble of lifting them up, and +enabling them to walk in the path which Nature had marked out for them? +Dead men tell no tales; and this old whited sepulchre, society, ain't going +to turn informer against itself." + +"I trust and hope," I said, sadly, "that if God intends me to rise, He +will open the way for me; perhaps the very struggles and sorrows of a poor +genius may teach him more than ever wealth and prosperity could." + +"True, Alton, my boy! and that's my only comfort. It does make men of us, +this bitter battle of life. We working men, when we do come out of the +furnace, come out, not tinsel and papier mache, like those fops of red-tape +statesmen, but steel and granite, Alton, my boy--that has been seven times +tried in the fire: and woe to the papier mache gentleman that runs against +us! But," he went on, sadly, "for one who comes safe through the furnace, +there are a hundred who crack in the burning. You are a young bear, my +lad, with all your sorrows before you; and you'll find that a working +man's training is like the Red Indian children's. The few who are +strong enough to stand it grow up warriors; but all those who are not +fire-and-water-proof by nature--just die, Alton, my lad, and the tribe +thinks itself well rid of them." + +So that conversation ended. But it had implanted in my bosom a new seed of +mingled good and evil, which was destined to bear fruit, precious perhaps +as well as bitter. God knows, it has hung on the tree long enough. Sour +and harsh from the first, it has been many a year in ripening. But the +sweetness of the apple, the potency of the grape, as the chemists tell +us, are born out of acidity--a developed sourness. Will it be so with +my thoughts? Dare I assert, as I sit writing here, with the wild waters +slipping past the cabin windows, backwards and backwards ever, every plunge +of the vessel one forward leap from the old world--worn-out world I had +almost called it, of sham civilization and real penury--dare I hope ever to +return and triumph? Shall I, after all, lay my bones among my own people, +and hear the voices of freemen whisper in my dying ears? + +Silence, dreaming heart! Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and +the good thereof also. Would that I had known that before! Above all, that +I had known it on that night, when first the burning thought arose in my +heart, that I was unjustly used; that society had not given me my rights. +It came to me as a revelation, celestial-infernal, full of glorious hopes +of the possible future in store for me through the perfect development of +all my faculties; and full, too, of fierce present rage, wounded vanity, +bitter grudgings against those more favoured than myself, which grew in +time almost to cursing against the God who had made me a poor untutored +working man, and seemed to have given me genius only to keep me in a +Tantalus' hell of unsatisfied thirst. + +Ay, respectable gentlemen and ladies, I will confess all to you--you shall +have, if you enjoy it, a fresh opportunity for indulging that supreme +pleasure which the press daily affords you of insulting the classes +whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; +the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, +inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous.--Is +your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have +you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of +these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not as they +came to me, as they come to thousands of the working men, daily and hourly, +"till their torments do, by length of time, become their elements"? What, +are we covetous too? Yes! And if those who have, like you, still covet +more, what wonder if those who have nothing covet something? Profligate +too? Well, though that imputation as a generality is utterly calumnious, +though your amount of respectable animal enjoyment per annum is a hundred +times as great as that of the most self-indulgent artizan, yet, if you had +ever felt what it is to want, not only every luxury of the senses, but even +bread to eat, you would think more mercifully of the man who makes up by +rare excesses, and those only of the limited kinds possible to him, for +long intervals of dull privation, and says in his madness, "Let us eat and +drink, for to-morrow we die!" We have our sins, and you have yours. Ours +may be the more gross and barbaric, but yours are none the less damnable; +perhaps all the more so, for being the sleek, subtle, respectable, +religious sins they are. You are frantic enough, if our part of the press +calls you hard names, but you cannot see that your part of the press +repays it back to us with interest. _We_ see those insults, and feel them +bitterly enough; and do not forget them, alas! soon enough, while they pass +unheeded by your delicate eyes as trivial truisms. Horrible, unprincipled, +villanous, seditious, frantic, blasphemous, are epithets, of course, when +applied to--to how large a portion of the English people, you will some day +discover to your astonishment. When will that come, and how? In thunder, +and storm, and garments rolled in blood? Or like the dew on the mown grass, +and the clear shining of the sunlight after April rain? + +Yes, it was true. Society had not given me my rights. And woe unto the man +on whom that idea, true or false, rises lurid, filling all his thoughts +with stifling glare, as of the pit itself. Be it true, be it false, it is +equally a woe to believe it; to have to live on a negation; to have to +worship for our only idea, as hundreds of thousands of us have this day, +the hatred, of the things which are. Ay, though, one of us here and there +may die in faith, in sight of the promised land, yet is it not hard, when +looking from the top of Pisgah into "the good time coming," to watch the +years slipping away one by one, and death crawling nearer and nearer, and +the people wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, and Jordan not +yet passed, the promised land not yet entered? While our little children +die around us, like lambs beneath the knife, of cholera and typhus and +consumption, and all the diseases which the good time can and will prevent; +which, as science has proved, and you the rich confess, might be prevented +at once, if you dared to bring in one bold and comprehensive measure, +and not sacrifice yearly the lives of thousands to the idol of vested +interests, and a majority in the House. Is it not hard to men who smart +beneath such things to help crying aloud--"Thou cursed Moloch-Mammon, take +my life if thou wilt; let me die in the wilderness, for I have deserved +it; but these little ones in mines and factories, in typhus-cellars, and +Tooting pandemoniums, what have they done? If not in their fathers' cause, +yet still in theirs, were it so great a sin to die upon a barricade?" + +Or after all, my working brothers, is it true of our promised land, even as +of that Jewish one of old, that the _priests'_ feet must first cross the +mystic stream into the good land and large which God has prepared for us? + +Is it so indeed? Then in the name of the Lord of Hosts, ye priests of His, +why will ye not awake, and arise, and go over Jordan, that the people of +the Lord may follow you? + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE SCEPTIC'S MOTHER. + + +My readers will perceive from what I have detailed, that I was not likely +to get any positive ground of comfort from Crossthwaite; and from within +myself there was daily less and less hope of any. Daily the struggle became +more intolerable between my duty to my mother and my duty to myself--that +inward thirst for mental self-improvement, which, without any clear +consciousness of its sanctity or inspiration, I felt, and could not help +feeling, that I _must_ follow. No doubt it was very self-willed and +ambitious of me to do that which rich men's sons are flogged for not doing, +and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships for +doing. But the nineteenth year is a time of life at which self-will is apt +to exhibit itself in other people besides tailors; and those religious +persons who think it no sin to drive their sons on through classics and +mathematics, in hopes of gaining them a station in life, ought not to be +very hard upon me for driving myself on through the same path without any +such selfish hope of gain--though perhaps the very fact of my having no +wish or expectation of such advantage will constitute in their eyes my sin +and folly, and prove that I was following the dictates merely of a carnal +lust, and not of a proper worldly prudence. I really do not wish to be +flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as much as any man, in +myself and in my own class. But there are excuses for such a fault in the +working man. It does sour and madden him to be called presumptuous and +ambitious for the very same aspirations which are lauded up to the skies in +the sons of the rich--unless, indeed, he will do one little thing, and so +make his peace with society. If he will desert his own class; if he will +try to become a sham gentleman, a parasite, and, if he can, a Mammonite, +the world will compliment him on his noble desire to "_rise in life_." +He will have won his spurs, and be admitted into that exclusive pale of +knighthood, beyond which it is a sin to carry arms even in self-defence. +But if the working genius dares to be true to his own class--to stay among +them--to regenerate them--to defend them--to devote his talents to those +among whom God placed him and brought him up--then he is the demagogue, the +incendiary, the fanatic, the dreamer. So you would have the monopoly of +talent, too, exclusive worldlings? And yet you pretend to believe in the +miracle of Pentecost, and the religion that was taught by the carpenter's +Son, and preached across the world by fishermen! + +I was several times minded to argue the question out with my mother, and +assert for myself the same independence of soul which I was now earning for +my body by my wages. Once I had resolved to speak to her that very evening; +but, strangely enough, happening to open the Bible, which, alas! I did +seldom at that time, my eye fell upon the chapter where Jesus, after having +justified to His parents His absence in the Temple, while hearing the +doctors and asking them questions, yet went down with them to Nazareth +after all, and was subject unto them. The story struck me vividly as a +symbol of my own duties. But on reading further, I found more than one +passage which seemed to me to convey a directly opposite lesson, where His +mother and His brethren, fancying Him mad, attempted to interfere with His +labours, and asserting their family rights as reasons for retaining Him, +met with a peremptory rebuff. I puzzled my head for some time to find +out which of the two cases was the more applicable to my state of +self-development. The notion of asking for teaching from on high on +such a point had never crossed me. Indeed, if it had, I did not believe +sufficiently either in the story or in the doctrines connected with it, +to have tried such a resource. And so, as may be supposed, my growing +self-conceit decided for me that the latter course was the fitting one. + +And yet I had not energy to carry it out. I was getting so worn out in body +and mind from continual study and labour, stinted food and want of sleep, +that I could not face the thought of an explosion, such as I knew must +ensue, and I lingered on in the same unhappy state, becoming more and more +morose in manner to my mother, while I was as assiduous as ever in all +filial duties. But I had no pleasure in home. She seldom spoke to me. +Indeed, there was no common topic about which we could speak. Besides, ever +since that fatal Sunday evening, I saw that she suspected me and watched +me. I had good reason to believe that she set spies upon my conduct. Poor +dear mother! God forbid that I should accuse thee for a single care of +thine, for a single suspicion even, prompted as they all were by a mother's +anxious love. I would never have committed these things to paper, hadst +thou not been far beyond the reach or hearing of them; and only now, in +hopes that they may serve as a warning, in some degree to mothers, but ten +times more to children. For I sinned against thee, deeply and shamefully, +in thought and deed, while thou didst never sin against me; though all thy +caution did but hasten the fatal explosion which came, and perhaps must +have come, under some form or other, in any case. + +I had been detained one night in the shop till late; and on my return my +mother demanded, in a severe tone, the reason of my stay; and on my telling +her, answered as severely that she did not believe me; that she had too +much reason to suspect that I had been with bad companions. + +"Who dared to put such a thought into your head?" + +She "would not give up her authorities, but she had too much reason to +believe them." + +Again I demanded the name of my slanderer, and was refused it. And then. +I burst out, for the first time in my life, into a real fit of rage with +her. I cannot tell how I dared to say what I did, but I was weak, nervous, +irritable--my brain excited beyond all natural tension. Above all, I felt +that she was unjust to me; and my good conscience, as well as my pride, +rebelled. + +"You have never trusted me," I cried, "you have watched me--" + +"Did you not deceive me once already?" + +"And if I did," I answered, more and more excited, "have I not slaved for +you, stinted myself of clothes to pay your rent? Have I not run to and fro +for you like a slave, while I knew all the time you did not respect me or +trust me? If you had only treated me as a child and an idiot, I could have +borne it. But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incarnate +fiend--dead in trespasses and sins--a child of wrath and the devil. What +right have you to be astonished if I should do my father's works?" + +"You may be ignorant of vital religion," she answered; "and you may insult +me. But if you make a mock of God's Word, you leave my house. If you can +laugh at religion, you can deceive me." + +The pent-up scepticism of years burst forth. + +"Mother," I said, "don't talk to me about religion, and election, and +conversion, and all that--I don't believe one word of it. Nobody does, +except good kind people--(like you, alas! I was going to say, but the devil +stopped the words at my lips)--who must needs have some reason to account +for their goodness. That Bowyer--he's a soft heart by nature, and as he +is, so he does--religion has had nothing to do with that, any more than it +has with that black-faced, canting scoundrel who has been telling you lies +about me. Much his heart is changed. He carries sneak and slanderer written +in his face--and sneak and slanderer he will be, elect or none. Religion? +Nobody believes in it. The rich don't; or they wouldn't fill their churches +up with pews, and shut the poor out, all the time they are calling them +brothers. They believe the gospel? Then why do they leave the men who make +their clothes to starve in such hells on earth as our workroom? No more +do the tradespeople believe in it; or they wouldn't go home from sermon +to sand the sugar, and put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying +puffs of their vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the +poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as for the +workmen--they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much good religion is doing +for them! You may see it's fit only for women and children--for go where +you will, church or chapel, you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies! +I don't believe a word of it,--once and for all. I'm old enough to think +for myself, and a free-thinker I will be, and believe nothing but what I +know and understand." + +I had hardly spoken the words, when I would have given worlds to recall +them--but it was to be--and it was. + +Sternly she looked at me full in the face, till my eyes dropped before her +gaze. Then she spoke steadily and slowly: + +"Leave this house this moment. You are no son of mine henceforward. Do you +think I will have my daughter polluted by the company of an infidel and a +blasphemer?" + +"I will go," I answered fiercely; "I can get my own living at all events!" +And before I had time to think, I had rushed upstairs, packed up my bundle, +not forgetting the precious books, and was on my way through the frosty, +echoing streets, under the cold glare of the winter's moon. + +I had gone perhaps half a mile, when the thought of home rushed over +me--the little room where I had spent my life--the scene of all my childish +joys and sorrows--which I should never see again, for I felt that my +departure was for ever. Then I longed to see my mother once again--not to +speak to her--for I was at once too proud and too cowardly to do that--but +to have a look at her through the window. One look--for all the while, +though I was boiling over with rage and indignation, I felt that it was all +on the surface--that in the depths of our hearts I loved her and she loved +me. And yet I wished to be angry, wished to hate her. Strange contradiction +of the flesh and spirit! + +Hastily and silently I retraced my steps to the house. The gate was +padlocked. I cautiously stole over the palings to the window--the shutter +was closed and fast. I longed to knock--I lifted my hand to the door, and +dare not: indeed, I knew that it was useless, in my dread of my mother's +habit of stern determination. That room--that mother I never saw again. I +turned away; sickened at heart, I was clambering back again, looking behind +me towards the window, when I felt a strong grip on my collar, and turning +round, had a policeman's lantern flashed in my face. + +"Hullo, young'un, and what do you want here?" with a strong emphasis, after +the fashion of policemen, on all his pronouns. + +"Hush! or you'll alarm my mother!" + +"Oh! eh! Forgot the latch-key, you sucking Don Juan, that's it, is it? Late +home from the Victory?" + +I told him simply how the case stood, and entreated him to get me a night's +lodging, assuring him that my mother would not admit me, or I ask to be +admitted. + +The policeman seemed puzzled, but after scratching his hat in lieu of his +head for some seconds, replied, + +"This here is the dodge--you goes outside and lies down on the kerb-stone; +whereby I spies you a-sleeping in the streets, contrary to Act o' +Parliament; whereby it is my duty to take you to the station-house; whereby +you gets a night's lodging free gracious for nothing, and company perwided +by her Majesty." + +"Oh, not to the station-house!" I cried in shame and terror. + +"Werry well; then you must keep moving all night continually, whereby you +avoids the hact; or else you goes to a twopenny-rope shop and gets a lie +down. And your bundle you'd best leave at my house. Twopenny-rope society +a'n't particular. I'm going off my beat; you walk home with me and leave +your traps. Everybody knows me--Costello, V 21, that's my number." + +So on I went with the kind-hearted man, who preached solemnly to me all the +way on the fifth commandment. But I heard very little of it; for before I +had proceeded a quarter of a mile, a deadly faintness and dizziness came +over me, I staggered, and fell against the railings. + +"And have you been drinking arter all?" + +"I never--a drop in my life--nothing but bread-and-water this fortnight." + +And it was true. I had been paying for my own food, and had stinted +myself to such an extent, that between starvation, want of sleep, and +over-exertion, I was worn to a shadow, and the last drop had filled the +cup; the evening's scene and its consequences had been too much for me, and +in the middle of an attempt to explain matters to the policeman, I dropped +on the pavement, bruising my face heavily. + +He picked me up, put me under one arm and my bundle under the other, and +was proceeding on his march, when three men came rollicking up. + +"Hullo, Poleax--Costello--What's that? Work for us? A demp unpleasant +body?" + +"Oh, Mr. Bromley, sir! Hope you're well, sir! Werry rum go this here, sir! +I finds this cove in the streets. He says his mother turned him out o' +doors. He seems very fair spoken, and very bad in he's head, and very bad +in he's chest, and very bad in he's legs, he does. And I can't come to no +conclusions respecting my conduct in this here case, nohow!" + +"Memorialize the Health of Towns Commission," suggested one. + +"Bleed him in the great toe," said the second. + +"Put a blister on the back of his left eye-ball," said a third. + +"Case of male asterisks," observed the first. "Rj. Aquae pumpis purae +quantum suff. Applicatur extero pro re nata. J. Bromley, M.D., and don't +he wish he may get through!"-- + +"Tip us your daddle, my boy," said the second speaker. "I'll tell you what, +Bromley, this fellow's very bad. He's got no more pulse than the +Pimlico sewer. Run in into the next pot'us. Here--you lay hold of him, +Bromley--that last round with the cabman nearly put my humerus out." + +The huge, burly, pea-jacketed medical student--for such I saw at once +he was--laid hold of me on the right tenderly enough, and walked me off +between him and the policeman. + +I fell again into a faintness, from which I was awakened by being shoved +through the folding-doors of a gin-shop, into a glare of light and hubbub +of blackguardism, and placed on a settle, while my conductor called out-- + +"Pots round, Mary, and a go of brandy hot with, for the patient. Here, +young'un, toss it off, it'll make your hair grow." + +I feebly answered that I never had drunk anything stronger than water. + +"High time to begin, then; no wonder you're so ill. Well, if you won't, +I'll make you--" + +And taking my head under his arm, he seized me by the nose, while another +poured the liquor down my throat--and certainly it revived me at once. + +A drunken drab pulled another drunken, drab off the settle to make room for +the "poor young man"; and I sat there with a confused notion that something +strange and dreadful had happened to me, while the party drained their +respective quarts of porter, and talked over the last boat-race with the +Leander. + +"Now then, gen'l'men," said the policeman, 'if you think he's recovered, +we'll take him home to his mother; she ought for to take him in, surely." + +"Yes, if she has as much heart in her as a dried walnut." + +But I resisted stoutly; though I longed to vindicate my mother's affection, +yet I could not face her. I entreated to be taken to the station-house; +threatened, in my desperation, to break the bar glasses, which, like Doll +Tearsheet's abuse, only elicited from the policeman a solemn "Very well"; +and under the unwonted excitement of the brandy, struggled so fiercely, and +talked so incoherently, that the medical students interfered. + +"We shall have this fellow in phrenitis, or laryngitis, or dothenenteritis, +or some other itis, before long, if he's aggravated." + +"And whichever it is, it'll kill him. He has no more stamina left than a +yard of pump water." + +"I should consider him chargeable to the parish," suggested the bar-keeper. + +"Exactually so, my Solomon of licensed victuallers. Get a workhouse order +for him, Costello." + +"And I should consider, also, sir," said the licensed victualler, with +increased importance, "having been a guardian myself, and knowing the hact, +as the parish couldn't refuse, because they're in power to recover all +hexpenses out of his mother." + +"To be sure; it's all the unnatural old witch's fault." + +"No, it is not," said I, faintly. + +"Wait till your opinion's asked, young'un. Go kick up the authorities, +policeman." + +"Now, I'll just tell you how that'll work, gemmen," answered the policeman, +solemnly. "I goes to the overseer--werry good sort o' man--but he's in bed. +I knocks for half an hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy, and sends me +to the relieving-officer. Werry good sort o' man he too; but he's in bed. +I knocks for another half-hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy--sends +me to the medical officer for a certificate. Medical officer's gone to a +midwifery case. I hunts him for an hour or so. He's got hold of a babby +with three heads, or summat else; and two more women a-calling out for him +like blazes. 'He'll come to-morrow morning.' Now, I just axes your opinion +of that there most procrastinationest go." + +The big student, having cursed the parochial authorities in general, +offered to pay for my night's lodging at the public-house. The good man of +the house demurred at first, but relented on being reminded of the value +of a medical student's custom: whereon, without more ado, two of the rough +diamonds took me between them, carried me upstairs, undressed me, and put +me to bed, as tenderly as if they had been women. + +"He'll have the tantrums before morning, I'm afraid," said one. + +"Very likely to turn to typhus," said the other. + +"Well, I suppose--it's a horrid bore, but + + "What must be must; man is but dust, + If you can't get crumb, you must just eat crust. + +"Send me up a go of hot with, and I'll sit up with him till he's asleep, +dead, or better." + +"Well, then, I'll stay too; we may just as well make a night of it here as +well as anywhere else." + +And he pulled a short black pipe out of his pocket, and sat down to +meditate with his feet on the hobs of the empty grate; the other man went +down for the liquor; while I, between the brandy and exhaustion, fell fast +asleep, and never stirred till I woke the next morning with a racking +headache, and saw the big student standing by my bedside, having, as I +afterwards heard, sat by me till four in the morning. + +"Hallo, young'un, come to your senses? Headache, eh? Slightly +comato-crapulose? We'll give you some soda and salvolatile, and I'll pay +for your breakfast." + +And so he did, and when he was joined by his companions on their way to St. +George's, they were very anxious, having heard my story, to force a few +shillings on me "for luck," which, I need not say, I peremptorily refused, +assuring them that I could and would get my own living, and never take a +farthing from any man. + +"That's a plucky dog, though he's a tailor," I heard them say, as, after +overwhelming them with thanks, and vowing, amid shouts of laughter, to +repay them every farthing I had cost them, I took my way, sick and stunned, +towards my dear old Sandy Mackaye's street. + +Rough diamonds indeed! I have never met you again, but I have not forgotten +you. Your early life may be a coarse, too often a profligate one--but you +know the people, and the people know you: and your tenderness and care, +bestowed without hope of repayment, cheers daily many a poor soul in +hospital wards and fever-cellars--to meet its reward some day at the +people's hands. You belong to us at heart, as the Paris barricades can +tell. Alas! for the society which stifles in after-life too many of your +better feelings, by making you mere flunkeys and parasites, dependent for +your livelihood on the caprices and luxuries of the rich. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE DULWICH GALLERY. + + +Sandy Mackaye received me in a characteristic way--growled at me for +half an hour for quarrelling with my mother, and when I was at my wit's +end, suddenly offered me a bed in his house and the use of his little +sitting-room--and, bliss too great to hope! of his books also; and when I +talked of payment, told me to hold my tongue and mind my own business. So +I settled myself at once; and that very evening he installed himself as my +private tutor, took down a Latin book, and set me to work on it. + +"An' mind ye, laddie," said he, half in jest and half in earnest, "gin I +find ye playing truant, and reading a' sorts o' nonsense instead of minding +the scholastic methods and proprieties, I'll just bring ye in a bill at the +year's end o' twa guineas a week for lodgings and tuition, and tak' the law +o' ye; so mind and read what I tell ye. Do you comprehend noo?" + +I did comprehend, and obeyed him, determining to repay him some day--and +somehow--how I did not very clearly see. Thus I put myself more or less +into the old man's power; foolishly enough the wise world will say. But I +had no suspicion in my character; and I could not look at those keen grey +eyes, when, after staring into vacancy during some long preachment, they +suddenly flashed round at me, and through me, full of fun and quaint +thought, and kindly earnestness, and fancy that man less honest than his +face seemed to proclaim him. + +By-the-by, I have as yet given no description of the old eccentric's +abode--an unpardonable omission, I suppose, in these days of Dutch painting +and Boz. But the omission was correct, both historically and artistically, +for I had as yet only gone to him for books, books, nothing but books; and +I had been blind to everything in his shop but that fairy-land of shelves, +filled, in my simple fancy, with inexhaustible treasures, wonder-working, +omnipotent, as the magic seal of Solomon. + +It was not till I had been settled and at work for several nights in his +sanctum, behind the shop, that I began to become conscious what a strange +den that sanctum was. + +It was so dark, that without a gaslight no one but he could see to read +there, except on very sunny days. Not only were the shelves which covered +every inch of wall crammed with books and pamphlets, but the little window +was blocked up with them, the floor was piled with bundles of them, in some +places three feet deep, apparently in the wildest confusion--though there +was some mysterious order in them which he understood, and symbolized, +I suppose, by the various strange and ludicrous nicknames on their +tickets--for he never was at fault a moment if a customer asked for a +book, though it were buried deep in the chaotic stratum. Out of this book +alluvium a hole seemed to have been dug near the fireplace, just big enough +to hold his arm-chair and a table, book-strewn like everything else, and +garnished with odds and ends of MSS., and a snuffer-tray containing scraps +of half-smoked tobacco, "pipe-dottles," as he called them, which were +carefully resmoked over and over again, till nothing but ash was left. +His whole culinary utensils--for he cooked as well as eat in this strange +hole--were an old rusty kettle, which stood on one hob, and a blue plate +which, when washed, stood on the other. A barrel of true Aberdeen meal +peered out of a corner, half buried in books, and a "keg o' whusky, the +gift o' freens," peeped in like case out of another. + +This was his only food. "It was a' poison," he used to say, "in London. +Bread full o' alum and bones, and sic filth--meat over-driven till it was +a' braxy--water sopped wi' dead men's juice. Naething was safe but gude +Scots parrich and Athol brose." He carried his water-horror so far as to +walk some quarter of a mile every morning to fill his kettle at a favourite +pump. "Was he a cannibal, to drink out o' that pump hard-by, right under +the kirkyard?" But it was little he either ate or drank--he seemed to live +upon tobacco. From four in the morning till twelve at night, the pipe +never left his lips, except when he went into the outer shop. "It promoted +meditation, and drove awa' the lusts o' the flesh. Ech! it was worthy o' +that auld tyrant, Jamie, to write his counter-blast to the poor man's +freen! The hypocrite! to gang preaching the virtues o' evil-savoured smoke +'ad daemones abigendos,--and then rail again tobacco, as if it was no as +gude for the purpose as auld rags and horn shavings!" + +Sandy Mackaye had a great fancy for political caricatures, rows of which, +there being no room for them on the walls, hung on strings from the +ceiling--like clothes hung out to dry--and among them dangled various books +to which he had taken an antipathy, principally High Tory and Benthamite, +crucified, impaled through their covers, and suspended in all sorts of +torturing attitudes. Among them, right over the table, figured a copy of +Icon Basilike dressed up in a paper shirt, all drawn over with figures of +flames and devils, and surmounted by a peaked paper cap, like a victim +at an _auto-da-fe_. And in the midst of all this chaos grinned from the +chimney-piece, among pipes and pens, pinches of salt and scraps of butter, +a tall cast of Michael Angelo's well-known skinless model--his pristine +white defaced by a cap of soot upon the top of his scalpless skull, and +every muscle and tendon thrown into horrible relief by the dirt which had +lodged among the cracks. There it stood, pointing with its ghastly arm +towards the door, and holding on its wrist a label with the following +inscription:-- + + Here stand I, the working man, + Get more off me if you can. + +I questioned Mackaye one evening about those hanged and crucified books, +and asked him if he ever sold any of them. + +"Ou, ay," he said; "if folks are fools enough to ask for them, I'll just +answer a fool according to his folly." + +"But," I said, "Mr. Mackaye, do you think it right to sell books of the +very opinions of which you disapprove so much?" + +"Hoot, laddie, it's just a spoiling o' the Egyptians; so mind yer book, and +dinna tak in hand cases o' conscience for ither folk. Yell ha' wark eneugh +wi' yer ain before ye're dune." + +And he folded round his knees his Joseph's coat, as he called it, an old +dressing-gown with one plaid sleeve, and one blue one, red shawl-skirts, +and a black broadcloth back, not to mention, innumerable patches of every +imaginable stuff and colour, filled his pipe, and buried his nose in +"Harrington's Oceana." He read at least twelve hours every day of his life, +and that exclusively old history and politics, though his favourite books +were Thomas Carlyle's works. Two or three evenings in the week, when he had +seen me safe settled at my studies, he used to disappear mysteriously +for several hours, and it was some time before I found out, by a chance +expression, that he was attending some meeting or committee of working-men. +I begged him to take me there with him. But I was stopped by a laconic +answer-- + +"When ye're ready." + +"And when shall I be ready, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Read yer book till I tell ye." + +And he twisted himself into his best coat, which had once been black, +squeezed on his little Scotch cap, and went out. + + * * * * * + +I now found myself, as the reader may suppose, in an element far more +congenial to my literary tastes, and which compelled far less privation of +sleep and food in order to find time and means for reading; and my health +began to mend from the very first day. But the thought of my mother haunted +me; and Mackaye seemed in no hurry to let me escape from it, for he +insisted on my writing to her in a penitent strain, informing her of my +whereabouts, and offering to return home if she should wish it. With +feelings strangely mingled between the desire of seeing her again and the +dread of returning to the old drudgery of surveillance, I sent the letter, +and waited the whole week without any answer. At last, one evening, when +I returned from work, Sandy seemed in a state of unusual exhilaration. He +looked at me again and again, winking and chuckling to himself in a way +which showed me that his good spirits had something to do with my concerns: +but he did not open on the subject till I had settled to my evening's +reading. Then, having brewed himself an unusually strong mug of +whisky-toddy, and brought out with great ceremony a clean pipe, he +commenced. + +"Alton, laddie, I've been fiechting Philistines for ye the day." + +"Ah! have you heard from my mother?" + +"I wadna say that exactly; but there's been a gran bailie body wi' me that +calls himsel' your uncle, and a braw young callant, a bairn o' his, I'm +thinking." + +"Ah! that's my cousin--George; and tell me--do tell me, what you said to +them." + +"Ou--that'll be mair concern o' mine than o' yourn. But ye're no going back +to your mither." + +My heart leapt up with--joy; there is no denying it--and then I burst into +tears. + +"And she won't see me? Has she really cast me off?" + +"Why, that'll be verra much as ye prosper, I'm thinking. Ye're an +unaccreedited hero, the noo, as Thomas Carlyle has it. 'But gin ye do weel +by yoursel', saith the Psalmist, 'ye'll find a' men speak well o' ye'--if +ye gang their gate. But ye're to gang to see your uncle at his shop o' +Monday next, at one o'clock. Now stint your greeting, and read awa'." + +On the next Monday I took a holiday, the first in which I had ever indulged +myself; and having spent a good hour in scrubbing away at my best shoes +and Sunday suit, started, in fear and trembling, for my uncle's +"establishment." + +I was agreeably surprised, on being shown into the little back office at +the back of the shop, to meet with a tolerably gracious reception from the +good-natured Mammonite. He did not shake hands with me, it is true;--was +I not a poor relation? But he told me to sit down, commended me for the +excellent character which he had of me both from my master and Mackaye, +and then entered on the subject of my literary tastes. He heard I was a +precious clever fellow. No wonder, I came of a clever stock; his poor dear +brother had plenty of brains for everything but business. "And you see, my +boy" (with a glance at the big ledgers and busy shop without), "I knew +a thing or two in my time, or I should not have been here. But without +capital, _I_ think brains a curse. Still we must make the best of a bad +matter; and if you are inclined to help to raise the family name--not +that I think much of book writers myself--poor starving devils, half of +them--but still people do talk about them--and a man might get a snug thing +as newspaper editor, with interest; or clerk to something or other--always +some new company in the wind now--and I should have no objection, if you +seemed likely to do us credit, to speak a word for you. I've none of your +mother's confounded puritanical notions, I can tell you; and, what's more, +I have, thank Heaven, as fine a city connexion as any man. But you must +mind and make yourself a good accountant--learn double entry on the Italian +method--that's a good practical study; and if that old Sawney is soft +enough to teach you other things gratis, he may as well teach you that +too. I'll bet he knows something about it--the old Scotch fox. There +now--that'll do--there's five shillings for you--mind you don't lose +them--and if I hear a good account of you, why, perhaps--but there's no use +making promises." + +At this moment a tall handsome young man, whom I did not at first recognize +as my cousin George, swung into the office, and shook me cordially by the +hand. + +"Hullo, Alton, how are you? Why, I hear you're coming out as a regular +genius--breaking out in a new place, upon my honour! Have you done with +him, governor?" + +"Well, I think I have. I wish you'd have a talk with him, my boy. I'm sorry +I can't see more of him, but I have to meet a party on business at the +West-end at two, and Alderman Tumbril and family dine with us this evening, +don't they? I think our small table will be full." + +"Of course it will. Come along with me, and we'll have a chat in some quiet +out-of-the-way place. This city is really so noisy that you can't hear your +own ears, as our dean says in lecture." + +So he carried me off, down back streets and alleys, a little puzzled at the +extreme cordiality of his manner. Perhaps it sprung, as I learned afterward +to suspect, from his consistent and perpetual habit of ingratiating himself +with every one whom he approached. He never cut a chimney-sweep if he +knew him. And he found it pay. The children of this world are in their +generation wiser than the children of light. + +Perhaps it sprung also, as I began to suspect in the first hundred yards of +our walk, from the desire of showing off before me the university clothes, +manners, and gossip, which he had just brought back with him from +Cambridge. + +I had not seen him more than three or four times in my life before, and +then he appeared to me merely a tall, handsome, conceited, slangy boy. But +I now found him much improved--in all externals at least. He had made it +his business, I knew, to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which +were open to a Londoner. As he told me that day--he found it pay, when one +got among gentlemen. Thus he had gone up to Cambridge a capital +skater, rower, pugilist--and billiard player. Whether or not that last +accomplishment ought to be classed in the list of athletic sports, he +contrived, by his own account, to keep it in that of paying ones. In +both these branches he seemed to have had plenty of opportunities of +distinguishing himself at college; and his tall, powerful figure showed +the fruit of these exercises in a stately and confident, almost martial, +carriage. Something jaunty, perhaps swaggering, remained still in his air +and dress, which yet sat not ungracefully on him; but I could see that he +had been mixing in society more polished and artificial than that to which +we had either of us been accustomed, and in his smart Rochester, well-cut +trousers, and delicate French boots, he excited, I will not deny it, my +boyish admiration and envy. + +"Well," he said, as soon as we were out of the shop, "which way? Got a +holiday? And how did you intend to spend it?" + +"I wanted very much," I said, meekly, "to see the pictures at the National +Gallery." + +"Oh! ah! pictures don't pay; but, if you like--much better ones at +Dulwich--that's the place to go to--you can see the others any day--and +at Dulwich, you know, they've got--why let me see--" And he ran over +half-a-dozen outlandish names of painters, which, as I have never again +met with them, I am inclined on the whole to consider as somewhat +extemporaneous creations. However, I agreed to go. + +"Ah! capital--very nice quiet walk, and convenient for me--very little out +of my way home. I'll walk there with you." + +"One word for your neighbour and two for yourself," thought I; but on +we walked. To see good pictures had been a long cherished hope of mine. +Everything beautiful in form or colour was beginning of late to have an +intense fascination for me. I had, now that I was emancipated, gradually +dared to feed my greedy eyes by passing stares into the print-shop windows, +and had learnt from them a thousand new notions, new emotions, new longings +after beauties of Nature, which seemed destined never to be satisfied. But +pictures, above all, foreign ones, had been in my mother's eyes, Anathema +Maranatha, as vile Popish and Pagan vanities, the rags of the scarlet woman +no less than the surplice itself--and now, when it came to the point, I +hesitated at an act of such awful disobedience, even though unknown to +her. My cousin, however, laughed down my scruples, told me I was out of +leading-strings now, and, which was true enough, that it was "a * * * * +deal better to amuse oneself in picture galleries without leave, than live +a life of sneaking and lying under petticoat government, as all home-birds +were sure to do in the long-run." And so I went on, while my cousin kept up +a running fire of chat the whole way, intermixing shrewd, bold observations +upon every woman who passed, with sneers at the fellows of the college to +which we were going--their idleness and luxury--the large grammar-school +which they were bound by their charter to keep up, and did not--and hints +about private interest in high quarters, through which their wealthy +uselessness had been politely overlooked, when all similar institutions +in the kingdom were subject to the searching examination of a government +commission. Then there were stories of boat-races and gay noblemen, +breakfast parties, and lectures on Greek plays flavoured with a spice of +Cambridge slang, all equally new to me--glimpses into a world of wonders, +which made me feel, as I shambled along at his side, trying to keep step +with his strides, more weakly and awkward and ignorant than ever. + +We entered the gallery. I was in a fever of expectation. + +The rich sombre light of the rooms, the rich heavy warmth of the +stove-heated air, the brilliant and varied colouring and gilded frames +which embroidered the walls, the hushed earnestness of a few artists, +who were copying, and the few visitors who were lounging from picture to +picture, struck me at once with mysterious awe. But my attention was in a +moment concentrated on one figure opposite to me at the furthest end. I +hurried straight towards it. When I had got half-way up the gallery I +looked round for my cousin. He had turned aside to some picture of a Venus +which caught my eye also, but which, I remember now, only raised in me then +a shudder and a blush, and a fancy that the clergymen must be really as +bad as my mother had taught me to believe, if they could allow in their +galleries pictures of undressed women. I have learnt to view such things +differently now, thank God. I have learnt that to the pure all things are +pure. I have learnt the meaning of that great saying--the foundation of all +art, as well as all modesty, all love, which tells us how "the man and his +wife were both naked, and not ashamed." But this book is the history of my +mental growth; and my mistakes as well as my discoveries are steps in that +development, and may bear a lesson in them. + +How I have rambled! But as that day was the turning-point of my whole short +life, I may be excused for lingering upon every feature of it. + +Timidly, but eagerly, I went up to the picture, and stood entranced before +it. It was Guido's St. Sebastian. All the world knows the picture, and all +the world knows, too, the defects of the master, though in this instance he +seems to have risen above himself, by a sudden inspiration, into that true +naturalness, which is the highest expression of the Spiritual. But the +very defects of the picture, its exaggeration, its theatricality, were +especially calculated to catch the eye of a boy awaking out of the narrow +dulness of Puritanism. The breadth and vastness of light and shade upon +those manly limbs, so grand and yet so delicate, standing out against the +background of lurid night, the helplessness of the bound arms, the arrow +quivering in the shrinking side, the upturned brow, the eyes in whose dark +depths enthusiastic faith seemed conquering agony and shame, the parted +lips, which seemed to ask, like those martyrs in the Revelations, +reproachful, half-resigned, "O Lord, how long?"--Gazing at that picture +since, I have understood how the idolatry of painted saints could arise in +the minds even of the most educated, who were not disciplined by that stern +regard for fact which is--or ought to be--the strength of Englishmen. I +have understood the heart of that Italian girl, whom some such picture of +St. Sebastian, perhaps this very one, excited, as the Venus of Praxiteles +the Grecian boy, to hopeless love, madness, and death. Then I had never +heard of St. Sebastian. I did not dream of any connexion between that, or +indeed any picture, and Christianity; and yet, as I stood before it, I +seemed to be face to face with the ghosts of my old Puritan forefathers, to +see the spirit which supported them on pillories and scaffolds--the spirit +of that true St. Margaret, the Scottish maiden whom Claverhouse and his +soldiers chained to a post on the sea-sands to die by inches in the rising +tide, till the sound of her hymns was slowly drowned in the dash of the +hungry leaping waves. My heart swelled within me, my eyes seemed bursting +from my head with the intensity of my gaze, and great tears, I knew not +why, rolled slowly down my face. + +A woman's voice close to me, gentle yet of deeper tone than most, woke me +from my trance. + +"You seem to be deeply interested in that picture?" + +I looked round, yet not at the speaker. My eyes before they could meet +hers, were caught by an apparition the most beautiful I had ever yet +beheld. And what--what--have I seen equal to her since? Strange, that I +should love to talk of her. Strange, that I fret at myself now because +I cannot set down on paper line by line, and hue by hue, that wonderful +loveliness of which--. But no matter. Had I but such an imagination as +Petrarch, or rather, perhaps, had I his deliberate cold self-consciousness, +what volumes of similes and conceits I might pour out, connecting that +peerless face and figure with all lovely things which heaven and earth +contain. As it is, because I cannot say all, I will say nothing, but repeat +to the end again and again, Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beyond all +statue, picture, or poet's dream. Seventeen--slight but rounded, a +masque and features delicate and regular, as if fresh from the chisel of +Praxiteles--I must try to describe after all, you see--a skin of alabaster +(privet-flowers, Horace and Ariosto would have said, more true to Nature), +stained with the faintest flush; auburn hair, with that peculiar crisped +wave seen in the old Italian pictures, and the warm, dark hazel eyes which +so often accompany it; lips like a thread of vermillion, somewhat too thin, +perhaps--but I thought little of that then; with such perfect finish and +grace in every line and hue of her features and her dress, down to the +little fingers and nails, which showed through her thin gloves, that she +seemed to my fancy fresh from the innermost chamber of some enchanted +palace, "where no air of heaven could visit her cheek too roughly." I +dropped my eyes quite dazzled. The question was repeated by a lady +who stood with her, whose face I remarked then--as I did to the last, +alas!--too little; dazzled at the first by outward beauty, perhaps because +so utterly unaccustomed to it. + +"It is indeed a wonderful picture," I said, timidly. "May I ask what is the +subject of it?" + +"Oh! don't you know?" said the young beauty, with a smile that thrilled +through me. "It is St. Sebastian." + +"I--I am very much ashamed," I answered, colouring up, "but I do not know +who St. Sebastian was. Was he a Popish saint?" + +A tall, stately old man, who stood with the two ladies, laughed kindly. +"No, not till they made him one against his will; and at the same time, by +putting him into the mill which grinds old folks young again, converted him +from a grizzled old Roman tribune into the young Apollo of Popery." + +"You will puzzle your hearer, my dear uncle," said the same deep-toned +woman's voice which had first spoken to me. "As you volunteered the saint's +name, Lillian, you shall also tell his history." + +Simply and shortly, with just feeling enough to send through me a fresh +thrill of delighted interest, without trenching the least on the most +stately reserve, she told me the well known history of the saint's +martyrdom. + +If I seem minute in my description, let those who read my story remember +that such courteous dignity, however natural, I am bound to believe, it +is to them, was to me an utterly new excellence in human nature. All my +mother's Spartan nobleness of manner seemed unexpectedly combined with all +my little sister's careless ease. + +"What a beautiful poem the story would make!" said I, as soon as I +recovered my thoughts. + +"Well spoken, young man," answered the old gentleman. "Let us hope that +your seeing a subject for a good poem will be the first step towards your +writing one." + +As he spoke, he bent on me two clear grey eyes, full of kindliness, mingled +with practised discernment. I saw that he was evidently a clergyman; but +what his tight silk stockings and peculiar hat denoted I did not know. +There was about him the air of a man accustomed equally to thought, to men, +and to power. And I remarked somewhat maliciously, that my cousin, who had +strutted up towards us on seeing me talking to two ladies, the instant +he caught sight of those black silk stockings and that strange hat, +fell suddenly in countenance, and sidling off somewhat meekly into the +background, became absorbed in the examination of a Holy Family. + +I answered something humbly, I forget what, which led to a conversation. +They questioned me as to my name, my mother, my business, my studies; while +I revelled in the delight of stolen glances at my new-found Venus Victrix, +who was as forward as any of them in her questions and her interest. +Perhaps she enjoyed, at least she could not help seeing, the admiration +for herself which I took no pains to conceal. At last the old man cut the +conversation short by a quiet "Good morning, sir," which astonished me. I +had never heard words whose tone was so courteous and yet so chillingly +peremptory. As they turned away, he repeated to himself once or twice, +as if to fix them in his mind, my name and my master's, and awoke in me, +perhaps too thoughtlessly, a tumult of vain hopes. Once and again the +beauty and her companion looked back towards me, and seemed talking of +me, and my face was burning scarlet, when my cousin swung up in his hard, +off-hand way. + +"By Jove, Alton, my boy! you're a knowing fellow. I congratulate you! At +your years, indeed! to rise a dean and two beauties at the first throw, and +hook them fast!" + +"A dean!" I said, in some trepidation. + +"Ay, a live dean--didn't you see the cloven foot sticking out from under +his shoe-buckle? What news for your mother! What will the ghosts of your +grandfathers to the seventh generation say to this, Alton? Colloquing in +Pagan picture galleries with shovel-hatted Philistines! And that's not the +worst, Alton," he ran on. "Those daughters of Moab--those daughters of +Moab--." + +"Hold your tongue," I said, almost crying with vexation. + +"Look there, if you want to save your good temper. There, she is looking +back again--not at poor me, though. What a lovely girl she is!--and a real +lady--_l'air noble_--the real genuine grit, as Sam Slick says, and no +mistake. By Jove, what a face! what hands! what feet! what a figure--in +spite of crinolines and all abominations! And didn't she know it? And +didn't she know that you knew it too?" And he ran on descanting coarsely on +beauties which I dared not even have profaned by naming, in a way that made +me, I knew not why, mad with jealousy and indignation. She seemed mine +alone in all the world. What right had any other human being, above all, +he, to dare to mention her? I turned again to my St. Sebastian. That +movement only brought on me a fresh volley of banter. + +"Oh, that's the dodge, is it, to catch intellectual fine ladies?--to fall +into an ecstatic attitude before a picture--But then we must have Alton's +genius, you know, to find out which the fine pictures are. I must read up +that subject, by-the-by. It might be a paying one among the dons. For +the present, here goes in for an attitude. Will this do, Alton?" And he +arranged himself admiringly before the picture in an attitude so absurd and +yet so graceful, that I did not know whether to laugh at him or hate him. + +"At all events," he added, dryly, "it will be as good as playing the +Evangelical at Carus's tea-parties, or taking the sacrament regularly for +fear one's testimonials should be refused." And then he looked at me, and +through me, in his intense, confident way, to see that his hasty words had +not injured him with me. He used to meet one's eye as boldly as any man I +ever saw; but it was not the simple gaze of honesty and innocence, but an +imperious, searching look, as if defying scrutiny. His was a true mesmeric +eye, if ever there was one. No wonder it worked the miracles it did. + +"Come along," he said, suddenly seizing my arm. "Don't you see they're +leaving? Out of the gallery after them, and get a good look at the carriage +and the arms upon it. I saw one standing there as we came in. It may pay +us--you, that is--to know it again." + +We went out, I holding him back, I knew not why, and arrived at the outer +gate just in time to see them enter the carriage and drive off. I gazed to +the last, but did not stir. + +"Good boy," he said, "knowing still. If you had bowed, or showed the least +sign of recognition, you would have broken the spell." + +But I hardly heard what he said, and stood gazing stupidly after the +carriage as it disappeared. I did not know then what had happened to me. I +know now, alas! too well. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +FIRST LOVE. + + +Truly I said, I did not know what had happened to me. I did not attempt to +analyse the intense, overpowering instinct which from that moment made the +lovely vision I had seen the lodestar of all my thoughts. Even now, I can +see nothing in those feelings of mine but simple admiration--idolatry, if +you will--of physical beauty. Doubtless there was more--doubtless--I had +seen pretty faces before, and knew that they were pretty, but they had +passed from my retina, like the prints of beauties which I saw in the +shop windows, without exciting a thought--even a conscious emotion of +complacency. But this face did not pass away. Day and night I saw it, just +as I had seen it in the gallery. The same playful smile--the same glance +alternately turned to me, and the glowing picture above her head--and that +was all I saw or felt. No child ever nestled upon its mother's shoulder +with feelings more celestially pure, than those with which I counted +over day and night each separate lineament of that exceeding loveliness. +Romantic? extravagant? Yes; if the world be right in calling a passion +romantic just in proportion as it is not merely hopeless, but pure and +unselfish, drawing its delicious power from no hope or faintest desire of +enjoyment, but merely from simple delight in its object--then my passion +was most romantic. I never thought of disparity in rank. Why should I? That +could not blind the eyes of my imagination. She was beautiful, and that was +all, and all in all to me; and had our stations been exchanged, and more +than exchanged; had I been King Cophetua, or she the beggar-maid, I should +have gloried in her just as much. + +Beloved sleepless hours, which I spent in picturing that scene to myself, +with all the brilliance of fresh recollection! Beloved hours! how soon +you pass away! Soon--soon my imagination began to fade; the traces of her +features on my mind's eye became confused and dim; and then came over me +the fierce desire to see her again, that I might renew the freshness of +that charming image. Thereon grew up an agony of longing--an agony of +weeks, and months, and years. Where could I find that face again? was my +ruling thought from morning till eve. I knew that it was hopeless to look +for her at the gallery where I had first seen her. My only hope was, that +at some place of public resort at the West End I might catch, if but for a +moment, an inspiring glance of that radiant countenance. I lingered round +the Burton Arch and Hyde Park Gate--but in vain. I peered into every +carriage, every bonnet that passed me in the thoroughfares--in vain. I +stood patiently at the doors of exhibitions and concerts, and playhouses, +to be shoved back by policemen, and insulted by footmen--but in vain. Then +I tried the fashionable churches, one by one; and sat in the free seats, +to listen to prayers and sermons, not a word of which, alas! I cared to +understand, with my eyes searching carefully every pew and gallery, face +by face; always fancying, in self-torturing waywardness, that she might be +just in the part of the gallery which I could not see. Oh! miserable +days of hope deferred, making the heart sick! Miserable gnawing of +disappointment with which I returned at nightfall, to force myself down to +my books! Equally miserable rack of hope on which my nerves were stretched +every morning when I rose, counting the hours till my day's work should be +over, and my mad search begin again! At last "my torment did by length of +time become my element." I returned steadily as ever to the studies which +I had at first neglected, much to Mackaye's wonder and disgust; and a vain +hunt after that face became a part of my daily task, to be got through with +the same dull, sullen effort, with which all I did was now transacted. + +Mackaye, I suppose, at first, attributed my absences and idleness to my +having got into bad company. But it was some weeks before he gently enough +told me his suspicions, and they were answered by a burst of tears, and a +passionate denial, which set them at rest forever. But I had not courage to +tell him what was the matter with me. A sacred modesty, as well as a sense +of the impossibility of explaining my emotions, held me back. I had a +half-dread, too, to confess the whole truth, of his ridiculing a fancy, +to say the least, so utterly impracticable; and my only confidant was +a picture in the National Gallery, in one of the faces of which I had +discovered some likeness to my Venus; and there I used to go and stand +at spare half hours, and feel the happier for staring and staring, and +whispering to the dead canvas the extravagances of my idolatry. + +But soon the bitter draught of disappointment began to breed harsher +thoughts in me. Those fine gentlemen who rode past me in the park, who +rolled by in carriages, sitting face to face with ladies, as richly +dressed, if not as beautiful, as she was--they could see her when they +liked--why not I? What right had their eyes to a feast denied to mine? +They, too, who did not appreciate, adore that beauty as I did--for who +could worship her like me? At least they had not suffered for her as I +had done; they had not stood in rain and frost, fatigue, and blank +despair--watching--watching--month after month; and I was making coats for +them! The very garment I was stitching at, might, in a day's time, be in +her presence--touching her dress; and its wearer bowing, and smiling, and +whispering--he had not bought that bliss by watching in the ram. It made me +mad to think of it. + +I will say no more about it. That is a period of my life on which I cannot +even now look back without a shudder. + +At last, after perhaps a year or more, I summoned up courage to tell my +story to Sandy Mackaye, and burst out with complaints more pardonable, +perhaps, than reasonable. + +"Why have I not as good a right to speak to her, to move in the same +society in which she moves, as any of the fops of the day? Is it because +these aristocrats are more intellectual than I? I should not fear to +measure brains against most of them now; and give me the opportunities +which they have, and I would die if I did not outstrip them. Why have I not +those opportunities? Is that fault of others to be visited on me? Is it +because they are more refined than I? What right have they, if this said +refinement be so necessary a qualification, a difference so deep--that, +without it, there is to be an everlasting gulf between man and man--what +right have they to refuse to let me share in it, to give me the opportunity +of acquiring it?" + +"Wad ye ha' them set up a dancing academy for working men, wi' 'manners +tocht here to the lower classes'? They'll no break up their ain monopoly; +trust them for it! Na: if ye want to get amang them, I'll tell ye the +way o't. Write a book o' poems, and ca' it 'A Voice fra' the Goose, by a +working Tailor'--and then--why, after a dizen years or so of starving and +scribbling for your bread, ye'll ha' a chance o' finding yoursel' a lion, +and a flunkey, and a licker o' trenchers--ane that jokes for his dinner, +and sells his soul for a fine leddy's smile--till ye presume to think +they're in earnest, and fancy yoursel' a man o' the same blude as they, and +fa' in love wi' one o' them--and then they'll teach you your level, and +send ye off to gauge whusky like Burns, or leave ye' to die in a ditch as +they did wi' puir Thom." + +"Let me die, anywhere or anyhow, if I can but be near her--see her--" + +"Married to anither body?--and nursing anither body's bairns. Ah boy, +boy--do ye think that was what ye were made for; to please yersel wi' a +woman's smiles, or e'en a woman's kisses--or to please yersel at all? How +do ye expect ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at a', as long as ye go +on looking to enjoy yersel--yersel? I ha' tried it. Mony was the year I +looked for nought but my ain pleasure, and got it too, when it was a' + + "Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye, + There he sits singing the lang simmer's day; + Lassies gae to him, + And kiss him, and woo him-- + Na bird is sa merry as Sandy Mackaye. + +"An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm talking like a sour, +disappointed auld carle. But I tell ye nay. I've got that's worth living +for, though I am downhearted at times, and fancy a's wrong, and there's na +hope for us on earth, we be a' sic liars--a' liars, I think: 'a universal +liars--rock substrawtum,' as Mr. Carlyle says. I'm a great liar often +mysel, especially when I'm praying. Do ye think I'd live on here in this +meeserable crankit auld bane-barrel o' a body, if it was not for The Cause, +and for the puir young fellows that come in to me whiles to get some +book-learning about the gran' auld Roman times, when folks didna care for +themselves, but for the nation, and a man counted wife and bairns and money +as dross and dung, in comparison wi' the great Roman city, that was the +mither o' them a', and wad last on, free and glorious, after they and their +bairns were a' dead thegither? Hoot, man! If I had na The Cause to care for +and to work for, whether I ever see it triumphant on earth or no--I'd just +tak' the cauld-water-cure off Waterloo-bridge, and mak' mysel a case for +the Humane Society." + +"And what is The Cause?" I asked. + +"Wud I tell ye? We want no ready-made freens o' The Cause. I dinna hauld +wi' thae French indoctrinating pedants, that took to stick free opinions +into a man as ye'd stick pins into a pincushion, to fa' out again the first +shake. Na--The Cause must find a man, and tak' hauld o' him, willy-nilly, +and grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can see nocht but in the +light o't. Puir bairn!" he went on, looking with a half-sad, half-comic +face at me--"puir bairn--like a young bear, wi' a' your sorrows before ye! +This time seven years ye'll ha' no need to come speering and questioning +what The Cause is, and the Gran' Cause, and the Only Cause worth working +for on the earth o' God. And noo gang your gate, and mak' fine feathers for +foul birds. I'm gaun whar ye'll be ganging too, before lang." + +As I went sadly out of the shop, he called me back. + +"Stay a wee, bairn; there's the Roman History for ye. There ye'll read what +The Cause is, and how they that seek their ain are no worthy thereof." + +I took the book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and Cocles, and +Scaevola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, what +The Cause was, and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and +patriotic self-sacrifice my own selfish longings and sorrows. + + * * * * * + +But, after all, the very advice which was meant to cure me of those selfish +longings, only tended, by diverting me from my living outward idol, to turn +my thoughts more than ever inward, and tempt them to feed on their +own substance. I passed whole days on the workroom floor in brooding +silence--my mind peopled with an incoherent rabble of phantasms patched +up from every object of which I had ever read. I could not control my +daydreams; they swept me away with them over sea and land, and into the +bowels of the earth. My soul escaped on every side from my civilized +dungeon of brick and mortar, into the great free world from which my body +was debarred. Now I was the corsair in the pride of freedom on the dark +blue sea. Now I wandered in fairy caverns among the bones of primaeval +monsters. I fought at the side of Leonidas, and the Maccabee who stabbed +the Sultan's elephant, and saw him crushed beneath its falling bulk. Now +I was a hunter in tropic forests--I heard the parrots scream, and saw the +humming birds flit on from gorgeous flower to flower. Gradually I took +a voluntary pleasure in calling up these images, and working out their +details into words with all the accuracy and care for which my small +knowledge gave me materials. And as the self-indulgent habit grew on me, +I began to live two lives--one mechanical and outward, one inward and +imaginative. The thread passed through my fingers without my knowing it; +I did my work as a machine might do it. The dingy stifling room, the wan +faces of my companions, the scanty meals which I snatched, I saw dimly, as +in a dream. The tropics, and Greece, the imaginary battles which I fought, +the phantoms into whose mouths I put my thoughts, were real and true to +me. They met me when I woke--they floated along beside me as I walked to +work--they acted their fantastic dramas before me through the sleepless +hours of night. Gradually certain faces among them became familiar--certain +personages grew into coherence, as embodiments of those few types of +character which had struck me the most, and played an analogous part in +every fresh fantasia. Sandy Mackaye's face figured incongruously enough as +Leonidas, Brutus, a Pilgrim Father; and gradually, in spite of myself, and +the fear with which I looked on the recurrence of that dream, Lillian's +figure re-entered my fairy-land. I saved her from a hundred dangers; I +followed her through dragon-guarded caverns and the corridors of magic +castles; I walked by her side through the forests of the Amazon.... + +And now I began to crave for some means of expressing these fancies +to myself. While they were mere thoughts, parts of me, they were +unsatisfactory, however delicious. I longed to put them outside me, that I +might look at them and talk to them as permanent independent things. First +I tried to sketch them on the whitewashed walls of my garret, on scraps +of paper begged from Mackaye, or picked up in the workroom. But from my +ignorance of any rules of drawing, they were utterly devoid of beauty, and +only excited my disgust. Besides, I had thoughts as well as objects to +express--thoughts strange, sad, wild, about my own feelings, my own +destiny, and drawing could not speak them for me. + +Then I turned instinctively to poetry: with its rules I was getting rapidly +conversant. The mere desire of imitation urged me on, and when I tried, the +grace of rhyme and metre covered a thousand defects. I tell my story, not +as I saw it then, but as I see it now. A long and lonely voyage, with its +monotonous days and sleepless nights--its sickness and heart-loneliness, +has given me opportunities for analysing my past history which were +impossible then, amid the ceaseless in-rush of new images, the ceaseless +ferment of their re-combination, in which my life was passed from sixteen +to twenty-five. The poet, I suppose, must be a seer as long as he is a +worker, and a seer only. He has no time to philosophize--to "think about +thinking," as Goethe, I have somewhere read, says that he never could do. +It is too often only in sickness and prostration and sheer despair, that +the fierce veracity and swift digestion of his soul can cease, and give him +time to know himself and God's dealings with him; and for that reason it is +good for him, too, to have been afflicted. + +I do not write all this to boast of it; I am ready to bear sneers at my +romance--my day-dreams--my unpractical habits of mind, for I know that I +deserve them. But such was the appointed growth of my uneducated mind; no +more unhealthy a growth, if I am to believe books, than that of many a +carefully trained one. Highborn geniuses, they tell me, have their idle +visions as well as we working-men; and Oxford has seen of late years as +wild Icarias conceived as ever were fathered by a red Republic. For, +indeed, we have the same flesh and blood, the same God to teach us, the +same devil to mislead us, whether we choose to believe it or not. But there +were excuses for me. We Londoners are not accustomed from our youth to the +poems of a great democratic genius, as the Scotchmen are to their glorious +Burns. We have no chance of such an early acquaintance with poetic art +as that which enabled John Bethune, one of the great unrepresented--the +starving Scotch day-labourer, breaking stones upon the parish roads, to +write at the age of seventeen such words as these:-- + + Hail, hallow'd evening! sacred hour to me! + Thy clouds of grey, thy vocal melody, + Thy dreamy silence oft to me have brought + A sweet exchange from toil to peaceful thought. + Ye purple heavens! how often has my eye, + Wearied with its long gaze on drudgery, + Look'd up and found refreshment in the hues + That gild thy vest with colouring profuse! + + O, evening grey! how oft have I admired + Thy airy tapestry, whose radiance fired + The glowing minstrels of the olden time, + Until their very souls flow'd forth in rhyme. + And I have listened, till my spirit grew + Familiar with their deathless strains, and drew + From the same source some portion of the glow + Which fill'd their spirits, when from earth below + They scann'd thy golden imagery. And I + Have consecrated _thee_, bright evening sky + My fount of inspiration; and I fling + My spirit on thy clouds--an offering + To the great Deity of dying day. + Who hath transfused o'er thee his purple ray. + * * * * * + +After all, our dreams do little harm to the rich. Those who consider +Chartism as synonymous with devil-worship, should bless and encourage them, +for the very reason for which we working men ought to dread them; for, +quickened into prurient activity by the low, novel-mongering press, they +help to enervate and besot all but the noblest minds among us. Here and +there a Thomas Cooper, sitting in Stafford gaol, after a youth spent in +cobbling shoes, vents his treasures of classic and historic learning in a +"Purgatory of Suicides"; or a Prince becomes the poet of the poor, no +less for having fed his boyish fancy with "The Arabian Nights" and "The +Pilgrim's Progress." But, with the most of us, sedentary and +monotonous occupations, as has long been known, create of themselves a +morbidly-meditative and fantastic turn of mind. And what else, in +Heaven's name, ye fine gentlemen--what else can a working man do with +his imagination, but dream? What else will you let him do with it, oh ye +education-pedants, who fancy that you can teach the masses as you would +drill soldiers, every soul alike, though you will not bestir yourselves +to do even that? Are there no differences of rank--God's rank, not +man's--among us? You have discovered, since your schoolboy days, the +fallacy of the old nomenclature which civilly classed us altogether as "the +snobs," "the blackguards"; which even--so strong is habit--tempted +Burke himself to talk of us as "the swinish multitude." You are finding +yourselves wrong there. A few more years' experience not in mis-educating +the poor, but in watching the poor really educate themselves, may teach you +that we are not all by nature dolts and idiots; that there are differences +of brain among us, just as great as there is between you; and that there +are those among us whose education ought not to end, and will not end, with +the putting off of the parish cap and breeches; whom it is cruelty, as well +as folly, to toss back into the hell of mere manual drudgery, as soon as +you have--if, indeed, you have been even so bountiful as that--excited in +them a new thirst of the intellect and imagination. If you provide that +craving with no wholesome food, you at least have no right to blame it if +it shall gorge itself with poison. + +Dare for once to do a strange thing, and let yourself be laughed at; go to +a workman's meeting--a Chartist meeting, if you will; and look honestly +at the faces and brows of those so-called incendiaries, whom your venal +caricaturists have taught you to believe a mixture of cur-dog and +baboon--we, for our part, shall not be ashamed to show foreheads against +your laughing House of Commons--and then say, what employment can those men +find in the soulless routine of mechanical labour for the mass of brain +which they almost universally possess? They must either dream or agitate; +perhaps they are now learning how to do both to some purpose. + +But I have found, by sad experience, that there is little use in +declamation. I had much better simply tell my story, and leave my readers +to judge of the facts, if, indeed, they will be so far courteous as to +believe them. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. + + +So I made my first attempt at poetry--need I say that my subject was the +beautiful Lillian? And need I say, too, that I was as utterly disgusted +at my attempt to express her in words, as I had been at my trial with the +pencil? It chanced also, that after hammering out half a dozen verses, I +met with Mr. Tennyson's poems; and the unequalled sketches of women that I +found there, while they had, with the rest of the book, a new and +abiding influence on my mind, were quite enough to show me my own fatal +incompetency in that line. I threw my verses away, never to resume them. +Perhaps I proved thereby the depth of my affection. Our mightiest feelings, +are always those which remain most unspoken. The most intense lovers and +the greatest poets have generally, I think, written very little personal +love-poetry, while they have shown in fictitious characters a knowledge of +the passion too painfully intimate to be spoken of in the first person. + +But to escape from my own thoughts, I could not help writing something; and +to escape from my own private sorrows, writing on some matter with which +I had no personal concern. And so, after much casting about for subjects, +Childe Harold and the old missionary records contrived to celebrate +a spiritual wedding in my brain, of which anomalous marriage came a +proportionately anomalous offspring. + +My hero was not to be a pirate, but a pious sea-rover, who, with a crew of +saints, or at least uncommonly fine fellows, who could be very manly +and jolly, and yet all be good Christians, of a somewhat vague and +latitudinarian cast of doctrine (for my own was becoming rapidly so), +set forth under the red-cross flag to colonize and convert one of my old +paradises, a South Sea Island. + +I forget most of the lines--they were probably great trash, but I hugged +them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child. + + 'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world, + The rich gleams fading in the western sky; + Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled, + The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high. + Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore, + Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar. + +After which valiant plunge _in medias res_, came a great lump of deception, +after the manner of youths--of the island, and the whitehouses, and the +banana groves, and above all, the single volcano towering over the whole, +which + + Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks, + Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks. + +Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at +first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island +beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly +guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not--a +great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it +convenient to say nothing. I think I picked it up from Wallis, or Cook, or +some other plain spoken voyager. + +The crew gaze in pardonable admiration, but the hero, in a long speech, +reproves them for their lightmindedness, reminds them of their sacred +mission, and informs them that, + + The soldiers of the cross should turn their eyes + From carnal lusts and heathen vanities; + +beyond which indisputable assertion I never got; for this being about +the fiftieth stanza, I stopped to take breath a little; and reading and +re-reading, patching and touching continually, grew so accustomed to my +bantling's face, that, like a mother, I could not tell whether it was +handsome or hideous, sense or nonsense. I have since found out that the +true plan, for myself at least, is to write off as much as possible at a +time, and then lay it by and forget it for weeks--if I can, for months. +After that, on returning to it, the mind regards it as something altogether +strange and new, and can, or rather ought to, judge of it as it would of +the work of another pen. + +But really, between conceit and disgust, fancying myself one day a great +new poet, and the next a mere twaddler, I got so puzzled and anxious, that +I determined to pluck up courage, go to Mackaye, and ask him to solve the +problem for me. + +"Hech, sirs, poetry! I've been expecting it. I suppose it's the appointed +gate o' a workman's intellectual life--that same lust o' versification. +Aweel, aweel,--let's hear." + +Blushing and trembling, I read my verses aloud in as resonant and +magniloquent a voice as I could command. I thought Mackaye's upper lip +would never stop lengthening, or his lower lip protruding. He chuckled +intensely at the unfortunate rhyme between "shocks" and "stocks." Indeed, +it kept him in chuckling matter for a whole month afterwards; but when I +had got to the shoal of naked girls, he could bear no more, and burst out-- + +"What the deevil! is there no harlotry and idolatry here in England, that +ye maun gang speering after it in the Cannibal Islands? Are ye gaun to be +like they puir aristocrat bodies, that wad suner hear an Italian dog howl, +than an English nightingale sing, and winna harken to Mr. John Thomas +till he calls himself Giovanni Thomasino; or do ye tak yourself for a +singing-bird, to go all your days tweedle-dumdeeing out into the lift, +just for the lust o' hearing your ain clan clatter? Will ye be a man or a +lintic? Coral Islands? Pacific? What do ye ken about Pacifics? Are ye a +Cockney or a Cannibal Islander? Dinna stand there, ye gowk, as fusionless +as a docken, but tell me that! Whaur do ye live?" + +"What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye?" asked I, with a doleful and disappointed +visage. + +"Mean--why, if God had meant ye to write aboot Pacifics, He'd ha' put ye +there--and because He means ye to write aboot London town, He's put ye +there--and gien ye an unco sharp taste o' the ways o't; and I'll gie ye +anither. Come along wi' me." + +And he seized me by the arm, and hardly giving me time to put on my hat, +marched me out into the streets, and away through Clare Market to St. +Giles's. + +It was a foul, chilly, foggy Saturday night. From the butchers' and +greengrocers' shops the gas lights flared and flickered, wild and ghastly, +over haggard groups of slip-shod dirty women, bargaining for scraps of +stale meat and frost-bitten vegetables, wrangling about short weight and +bad quality. Fish-stalls and fruit-stalls lined the edge of the greasy +pavement, sending up odours as foul as the language of sellers and buyers. +Blood and sewer-water crawled from under doors and out of spouts, and +reeked down the gutters among offal, animal and vegetable, in every stage +of putrefaction. Foul vapours rose from cowsheds and slaughter houses, and +the doorways of undrained alleys, where the inhabitants carried the filth +out on their shoes from the back-yard into the court, and from the court +up into the main street; while above, hanging like cliffs over the +streets--those narrow, brawling torrents of filth, and poverty, and +sin,--the houses with their teeming load of life were piled up into the +dingy, choking night. A ghastly, deafening sickening sight it was. Go, +scented Belgravian! and see what London is! and then go to the library +which God has given thee--one often fears in vain--and see what science +says this London might be! + +"Ay," he muttered to himself, as he strode along, "sing awa; get yoursel +wi' child wi' pretty fancies and gran' words, like the rest o' the poets, +and gang to hell for it." + +"To hell, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie--a warse ane than ony +fiends' kitchen, or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the +pulpits--the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless +peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures--and kenning +it--and not being able to get oot o' it, for the chains o' vanity and +self-indulgence. I've warned ye. Now look there--" + +He stopped suddenly before the entrance of a miserable alley-- + +"Look! there's not a soul down that yard but's either beggar, drunkard, +thief, or warse. Write anent that! Say how you saw the mouth o' hell, and +the twa pillars thereof at the entry--the pawnbroker's shop o' one side, +and the gin palace at the other--twa monstrous deevils, eating up men, and +women, and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o' the monsters, how +they open and open, and swallow in anither victim and anither. Write anent +that." + +"What jaws, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"They faulding-doors o' the gin shop, goose. Are na they a mair damnable +man-devouring idol than ony red-hot statue o' Moloch, or wicker Gogmagog, +wherein thae auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at thae bare-footed +bare-backed hizzies, with their arms roun' the men's necks, and their +mouths full o' vitriol and beastly words! Look at that Irishwoman pouring +the gin down the babbie's throat! Look at that rough o' a boy gaun out +o' the pawn shop, where he's been pledging the handkerchief he stole the +morning, into the gin shop, to buy beer poisoned wi' grains o' +paradise, and cocculus indicus, and saut, and a' damnable, maddening, +thirst-breeding, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in wi' +a shawl on her back and cam' out wi'out ane! Drunkards frae the +breast!--harlots frae the cradle! damned before they're born! John Calvin +had an inkling o' the truth there, I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his +reprobation deevil's doctrines!" + +"Well--but--Mr. Mackaye, I know nothing about these poor creatures." + +"Then ye ought. What do ye ken anent the Pacific? Which is maist to your +business?--thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' the other side +o' the warld, or these--these thousands o' bare-backed hizzies that play +the harlot o' your ain side--made out o' your ain flesh and blude? You a +poet! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If ye'll +be a poet at a', ye maun be a cockney poet; and while the cockneys be what +they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation and mourning +and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin you want to learn the spirit o' a +people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin +ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning till night; and gin +ye'd learn the matter, just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes open, +and ye'll no miss it." + +"But all this is so--so unpoetical." + +"Hech! Is there no the heeven above them there, and the hell beneath them? +and God frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra +idea of the classic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circumstance? +Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man +conquering circumstance?--and I'll show you that, too--in mony a garret +where no eye but the gude God's enters, to see the patience, and the +fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that's +shining in thae dark places o' the earth. Come wi' me, and see." + +We went on through a back street or two, and then into a huge, miserable +house, which, a hundred years ago, perhaps, had witnessed the luxury, and +rung to the laughter of some one great fashionable family, alone there +in their glory. Now every room of it held its family, or its group of +families--a phalanstery of all the fiends;--its grand staircase, with the +carved balustrades rotting and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a +common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails +of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of +air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret +door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; +but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the +broken windows, patched with rags and paper, there was a scrupulous +neatness about the whole, which contrasted strangely with the filth and +slovenliness outside. There was no bed in the room--no table. On a broken +chair by the chimney sat a miserable old woman, fancying that she was +warming her hands over embers which had long been cold, shaking her head, +and muttering to herself, with palsied lips, about the guardians and the +workhouse; while upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl, ugly, small-pox +marked, hollow eyed, emaciated, her only bed clothes the skirt of a large +handsome new riding-habit, at which two other girls, wan and tawdry, were +stitching busily, as they sat right and left of her on the floor. The old +woman took no notice of us as we entered; but one of the girls looked up, +and, with a pleased gesture of recognition, put her finger up to her lips, +and whispered, "Ellen's asleep." + +"I'm not asleep, dears," answered a faint, unearthly voice; "I was only +praying. Is that Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Ay, my lassies; but ha' ye gotten na fire the nicht?" + +"No," said one of them, bitterly, "we've earned no fire to-night, by fair +trade or foul either." + +The sick girl tried to raise herself up and speak, but was stopped by a +frightful fit of coughing and expectoration, as painful, apparently, to the +sufferer as it was, I confess, disgusting even to me. + +I saw Mackaye slip something into the hand of one of the girls, and +whisper, "A half-hundred of coals;" to which she replied, with an eager +look of gratitude that I never can forget, and hurried out. Then the +sufferer, as if taking advantage of her absence, began to speak quickly and +eagerly. + +"Oh, Mr. Mackaye--dear, kind Mr. Mackaye--do speak to her; and do speak to +poor Lizzy here! I'm not afraid to say it before her, because she's more +gentle like, and hasn't learnt to say bad words yet--but do speak to them, +and tell them not to go the bad Way, like all the rest. Tell them it'll +never prosper. I know it is want that drives them to it, as it drives all +of us--but tell them it's best to starve and die honest girls, than to go +about with the shame and the curse of God on their hearts, for the sake of +keeping this poor, miserable, vile body together a few short years more in +this world o' sorrow. Do tell them, Mr. Mackaye." + +"I'm thinking," said he, with the tears running down his old withered face, +"ye'll mak a better preacher at that text than I shall, Ellen." + +"Oh, no, no; who am I, to speak to them?--it's no merit o' mine, Mr. +Mackaye, that the Lord's kept me pure through it all. I should have been +just as bad as any of them, if the Lord had not kept me out of temptation +in His great mercy, by making me the poor, ill-favoured creature I am. From +that time I was burnt when I was a child, and had the small-pox afterwards, +oh! how sinful I was, and repined and rebelled against the Lord! And now I +see it was all His blessed mercy to keep me out of evil, pure and unspotted +for my dear Jesus, when He comes to take me to Himself. I saw Him last +night, Mr. Mackaye, as plain as I see you now, ail in a flame of beautiful +white fire, smiling at me so sweetly; and He showed me the wounds in His +hands and His feet, and He said, 'Ellen, my own child, those that suffer +with me here, they shall be glorified with me hereafter, for I'm coming +very soon to take you home.'" + +Sandy shook his head at all this with a strange expression of face, as if +he sympathized and yet disagreed, respected and yet smiled at the shape +which her religious ideas had assumed; and I remarked in the meantime that +the poor girl's neck and arm were all scarred and distorted, apparently +from the effects of a burn. + +"Ah," said Sandy, at length, "I tauld ye ye were the better preacher of the +two; ye've mair comfort to gie Sandy than he has to gie the like o' ye. But +how is the wound in your back the day?" + +Oh, it was wonderfully better! the doctor had come and given her such +blessed ease with a great thick leather he had put under it, and then she +did not feel the boards through so much. "But oh, Mr. Mackaye, I'm so +afraid it will make me live longer to keep me away from my dear Saviour. +And there's one thing, too, that's breaking my heart, and makes me long to +die this very minute, even if I didn't go to Heaven at all, Mr. Mackaye." +(And she burst out crying, and between her sobs it came out, as well as +I could gather, that her notion was, that her illness was the cause of +keeping the girls in "_the bad ivay_," as she called it.) "For Lizzy here, +I did hope that she had repented of it after all my talking to her; but +since I've been so bad, and the girls have had to keep me most o' the time, +she's gone out of nights just as bad as ever." + +Lizzy had hid her face in her hands the greater part of this speech. Now +she looked up passionately, almost fiercely-- + +"Repent--I have repented--I repent of it every hour--I hate myself, and +hate all the world because of it; but I must--I must; I cannot see her +starve, and I cannot starve myself. When she first fell sick she kept on as +long as she could, doing what she could, and then between us we only earned +three shillings a week, and there was ever so much to take off for fire, +and twopence for thread, and fivepence for candles; and then we were always +getting fined, because they never gave us out the work till too late on +purpose, and then they lowered prices again; and now Ellen can't work at +all, and there's four of us with the old lady, to keep off two's work that +couldn't keep themselves alone." + +"Doesn't the parish allow the old lady anything?" I ventured to ask. + +"They used to allow half-a-crown for a bit; and the doctor ordered Ellen +things from the parish, but it isn't half of 'em she ever got; and when the +meat came, it was half times not fit to eat, and when it was her stomach +turned against it. If she was a lady she'd be cockered up with all sorts of +soups and jellies, and nice things, just the minute she fancied 'em, and +lie on a water bed instead of the bare floor--and so she ought; but where's +the parish'll do that? And the hospital wouldn't take her in because she +was incurable; and, besides, the old'un wouldn't let her go--nor into the +union neither. When she's in a good-humour like, she'll sit by her by the +hour, holding her hand and kissing of it, and nursing of it, for all the +world like a doll. But she won't hear of the workhouse; so now, these last +three weeks, they takes off all her pay, because they says she must go into +the house, and not kill her daughter by keeping her out--as if they warn't +a killing her themselves." + +"No workhouse--no workhouse!" said the old woman, turning round suddenly, +in a clear, lofty voice. "No workhouse, sir, for an officer's daughter!" + +And she relapsed into her stupor. + +At that moment the other girl entered with the coals--but without staying +to light the fire, ran up to Ellen with some trumpery dainty she had +bought, and tried to persuade her to eat it. + +"We have been telling Mr. Mackaye everything," said poor Lizzy. + +"A pleasant story, isn't it? Oh! if that fine lady, as we're making that +riding-habit for, would just spare only half the money that goes to +dressing her up to ride in the park, to send us out to the colonies, +wouldn't I be an honest girl there?--maybe an honest man's wife! Oh, my +God, wouldn't I slave my fingers to the bone to work for him! Wouldn't I +mend my life then! I couldn't help it--it would be like getting into heaven +out of hell. But now--we must--we must, I tell you. I shall go mad soon, I +think, or take to drink. When I passed the gin-shop down there just now, +I had to run like mad for fear I should go in; and if I once took to +that--Now then, to work again. Make up the fire, Mrs. * * * *, please do." + +And she sat down, and began stitching frantically at the riding-habit, +from which the other girl had hardly lifted her hands or eyes for a moment +during our visit. + +We made a motion, as if to go. + +"God bless you," said Ellen; "come again soon, dear Mr. Mackaye." + +"Good-bye," said the elder girl; "and good-night to you. Night and day's +all the same here--we must have this home by seven o'clock to-morrow +morning. My lady's going to ride early, they say, whoever she may be, and +we must just sit up all night. It's often we haven't had our clothes off +for a week together, from four in the morning till two the next morning +sometimes--stitch, stitch, stitch. Somebody's wrote a song about that--I'll +learn to sing it--it'll sound fitting-like up here." + +"Better sing hymns," said Ellen. + +"Hymns for * * * * * *?" answered the other, and then burst out into that +peculiar, wild, ringing, fiendish laugh--has my reader never heard it? + +I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed, and tried to +make the girls take them, for the sake of poor Ellen. + +"No; you're a working man, and we won't feed on you--you'll want it some +day--all the trade's going the same way as we, as fast as ever it can!" + +Sandy and I went down the stairs. + +"Poetic element? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her +beauty--like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time--is there na poetry +there? That puir lassie, dying on the bare boards, and seeing her Saviour +in her dreams, is there na poetry there, callant? That auld body owre the +fire, wi' her 'an officer's dochter,' is there na poetry there? That +ither, prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen--is there na poetry +there?--tragedy-- + + "With hues as when some mighty painter dips + His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse. + +"Ay, Shelley's gran'; always gran'; but Fact is grander--God and Satan are +grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are +God and Satan at death grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or +Paradise Regained; and will ye think it beneath ye to be the 'People's +Poet?'" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +POETRY AND POETS. + + +In the history of individuals, as well as in that of nations, there is +often a period of sudden blossoming--a short luxuriant summer, not without +its tornadoes and thunder-glooms, in which all the buried seeds of past +observation leap forth together into life, and form, and beauty. And such +with me were the two years that followed. I thought--I talked poetry +to myself all day long. I wrote nightly on my return from work. I am +astonished, on looking back, at the variety and quantity of my productions +during that short time. My subjects were intentionally and professedly +cockney ones. I had taken Mackaye at his word. I had made up my mind, that +if I had any poetic powers I must do my duty therewith in that station of +life to which it had pleased God to call me, and look at everything simply +and faithfully as a London artizan. To this, I suppose, is to be attributed +the little geniality and originality for which the public have kindly +praised my verses--a geniality which sprung, not from the atmosphere whence +I drew, but from the honesty and single-mindedness with which, I hope, I +laboured. Not from the atmosphere, indeed,--that was ungenial enough; crime +and poverty, all-devouring competition, and hopeless struggles against +Mammon and Moloch, amid the roar of wheels, the ceaseless stream of pale, +hard faces, intent on gain, or brooding over woe; amid endless prison walls +of brick, beneath a lurid, crushing sky of smoke and mist. It was a dark, +noisy, thunderous element that London life; a troubled sea that cannot +rest, casting up mire and dirt; resonant of the clanking of chains, the +grinding of remorseless machinery, the wail of lost spirits from the pit. +And it did its work upon me; it gave a gloomy colouring, a glare as of some +Dantean "Inferno," to all my utterances. It did not excite me or make me +fierce--I was too much inured to it--but it crushed and saddened me; it +deepened in me that peculiar melancholy of intellectual youth, which +Mr. Carlyle has christened for ever by one of his immortal +nicknames--"Werterism"; I battened on my own melancholy. I believed, I +loved to believe, that every face I passed bore the traces of discontent as +deep as was my own--and was I so far wrong? Was I so far wrong either in +the gloomy tone of my own poetry? Should not a London poet's work just now +be to cry, like the Jew of old, about the walls of Jerusalem, "Woe, woe +to this city!" Is this a time to listen to the voices of singing men and +singing women? or to cry, "Oh! that my head were a fountain of tears, that +I might weep for the sins of my people"? Is it not noteworthy, also, that +it is in this vein that the London poets have always been greatest? Which +of poor Hood's lyrics have an equal chance of immortality with "The Song of +the Shirt" and "The Bridge of Sighs," rising, as they do, right out of +the depths of that Inferno, sublime from their very simplicity? Which +of Charles Mackay's lyrics can compare for a moment with the Eschylean +grandeur, the terrible rhythmic lilt of his "Cholera Chant"-- + + Dense on the stream the vapours lay, + Thick as wool on the cold highway; + Spungy and dim each lonely lamp + Shone o'er the streets so dull and damp; + The moonbeams could not pierce the cloud + That swathed the city like a shroud; + There stood three shapes on the bridge alone, + Three figures by the coping-stone; + Gaunt and tall and undefined, + Spectres built of mist and wind. + * * * * * + I see his footmarks east and west-- + I hear his tread in the silence fall-- + He shall not sleep, he shall not rest-- + He comes to aid us one and all. + Were men as wise as men might be, + They would not work for you, for me, + For him that cometh over the sea; + But they will not hear the warning voice: + The Cholera comes,--Rejoice! rejoice! + He shall be lord of the swarming town! + And mow them down, and mow them down! + * * * * * + +Not that I neglected, on the other hand, every means of extending the +wanderings of my spirit into sunnier and more verdant pathways. If I had to +tell the gay ones above of the gloom around me, I had also to go forth into +the sunshine, to bring home if it were but a wild-flower garland to those +that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. That was all that I could +offer them. The reader shall judge, when he has read this book throughout, +whether I did not at last find for them something better than even all the +beauties of nature. + +But it was on canvas, and not among realities, that I had to choose my +garlands; and therefore the picture galleries became more than ever my +favourite--haunt, I was going to say; but, alas! it was not six times a +year that I got access to them. Still, when once every May I found myself, +by dint of a hard saved shilling, actually within the walls of that to me +enchanted palace, the Royal Academy Exhibition--Oh, ye rich! who gaze round +you at will upon your prints and pictures, if hunger is, as they say, +a better sauce than any Ude invents, and fasting itself may become the +handmaid of luxury, you should spend, as I did perforce, weeks and months +shut out from every glimpse of Nature, if you would taste her beauties, +even on canvas, with perfect relish and childish self-abandonment. How +I loved and blessed those painters! how I thanked Creswick for every +transparent shade-chequered pool; Fielding, for every rain-clad down; +Cooper, for every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool grey willows; +Stanfield, for every snowy peak, and sheet of foam-fringed sapphire--each +and every one of them a leaf out of the magic book which else was ever +closed to me. Again, I say, how I loved and blest those painters! On the +other hand, I was not neglecting to read as well as to write poetry; and, +to speak first of the highest, I know no book, always excepting Milton, +which at once so quickened and exalted my poetical view of man and his +history, as that great prose poem, the single epic of modern days, Thomas +Carlyle's "French Revolution." Of the general effect which his works had on +me, I shall say nothing: it was the same as they have had, thank God, on +thousands of my class and of every other. But that book above all first +recalled me to the overwhelming and yet ennobling knowledge that there +was such a thing as Duty; first taught me to see in history not the mere +farce-tragedy of man's crimes and follies, but the dealings of a righteous +Ruler of the universe, whose ways are in the great deep, and whom the sins +and errors, as well as the virtues and discoveries of man, must obey and +justify. + +Then, in a happy day, I fell on Alfred Tennyson's poetry, and found there, +astonished and delighted, the embodiment of thoughts about the earth around +me which I had concealed, because I fancied them peculiar to myself. Why is +it that the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds +of the young? Surely not for the mere charm of novelty? The reason is that +he, living amid the same hopes, the same temptations, the same sphere of +observation as they, gives utterance and outward form to the very questions +which, vague and wordless, have been exercising their hearts. And what +endeared Tennyson especially to me, the working man, was, as I afterwards +discovered, the altogether democratic tendency of his poems. True, all +great poets are by their office democrats; seers of man only as man; +singers of the joys, the sorrows, the aspirations common to all humanity; +but in Alfred Tennyson there is an element especially democratic, truly +levelling; not his political opinions, about which I know nothing, and +care less, but his handling of the trivial every-day sights and sounds of +nature. Brought up, as I understand, in a part of England which possesses +not much of the picturesque, and nothing of that which the vulgar call +sublime, he has learnt to see that in all nature, in the hedgerow and the +sandbank, as well as in the alp peak and the ocean waste, is a world of +true sublimity,--a minute infinite,--an ever fertile garden of poetic +images, the roots of which are in the unfathomable and the eternal, as +truly as any phenomenon which astonishes and awes the eye. The descriptions +of the desolate pools and creeks where the dying swan floated, the hint of +the silvery marsh mosses by Mariana's moat, came to me like revelations. +I always knew there was something beautiful, wonderful, sublime, in those +flowery dykes of Battersea Fields; in the long gravelly sweeps of that lone +tidal shore; and here was a man who had put them into words for me! This +is what I call democratic art--the revelation of the poetry which lies in +common things. And surely all the age is tending in that direction: in +Landseer and his dogs--in Fielding and his downs, with a host of noble +fellow-artists--and in all authors who have really seized the nation's +mind, from Crabbe and Burns and Wordsworth to Hood and Dickens, the great +tide sets ever onward, outward, towards that which is common to the many, +not that which is exclusive to the few--towards the likeness of Him who +causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and His sun to shine on +the evil and the good; who knoweth the cattle upon a thousand hills, and +all the beasts of the field are in His sight. + +Well--I must return to my story. And here some one may ask me, "But did +you not find this true spiritual democracy, this universal knowledge and +sympathy, in Shakspeare above all other poets?" It may be my shame to have +to confess it; but though I find it now, I did not then. I do not think, +however, my case is singular: from what I can ascertain, there is, even +with regularly educated minds, a period of life at which that great writer +is not appreciated, just on account of his very greatness; on account of +the deep and large experience which the true understanding of his plays +requires--experience of man, of history, of art, and above all of those +sorrows whereby, as Hezekiah says, and as I have learnt almost too +well--"whereby men live, and in all which, is the life of the spirit." At +seventeen, indeed, I had devoured Shakspeare, though merely for the food to +my fancy which his plots and incidents supplied, for the gorgeous colouring +of his scenery: but at the period of which I am now writing, I had +exhausted that source of mere pleasure; I was craving for more explicit and +dogmatic teaching than any which he seemed to supply; and for three years, +strange as it may appear, I hardly ever looked into his pages. Under what +circumstances I afterwards recurred to his exhaustless treasures, my +readers shall in due time be told. + +So I worked away manfully with such tools and stock as I possessed, and +of course produced, at first, like all young writers, some sufficiently +servile imitations of my favourite poets. + +"Ugh!" said Sandy, "wha wants mongrels atween Burns and Tennyson? A gude +stock baith: but gin ye'd cross the breed ye maun unite the spirits, and +no the manners, o' the men. Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebor's +barnacles, before he glints out o' windows? Mak a style for yoursel, +laddie; ye're na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire laird: sae gang +yer ain gate and leave them to gang theirs; and just mak a gran', brode, +simple, Saxon style for yoursel." + +"But how can I, till I know what sort of a style it ought to be?" + +"Oh! but yon's amazing like Tom Sheridan's answer to his father. 'Tom,' +says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun tak a wife.' 'Verra weel, father,' +says the puir skellum; 'and wha's wife shall I tak?' Wha's style shall I +tak? say all the callants the noo. Mak a style as ye would mak a wife, by +marrying her a' to yoursel; and ye'll nae mair ken what's your style till +it's made, than ye'll ken what your wife's like till she's been mony a year +by your ingle." + +"My dear Mackaye," I said, "you have the most unmerciful way of raising +difficulties, and then leaving poor fellows to lay the ghost for +themselves." + +"Hech, then, I'm a'thegither a negative teacher, as they ca' it in the new +lallans. I'll gang out o' my gate to tell a man his kye are laired, but I'm +no obligated thereby to pu' them out for him. After a', nae man is rid o' a +difficulty till he's conquered it single-handed for himsel: besides, I'm na +poet, mair's the gude hap for you." + +"Why, then?" + +"Och, och! they're puir, feckless, crabbit, unpractical bodies, they poets; +but if it's your doom, ye maun dree it; and I'm sair afeard ye ha' gotten +the disease o' genius, mair's the pity, and maun write, I suppose, +willy-nilly. Some folks' booels are that made o' catgut, that they canna +stir without chirruping and screeking." + +However, _aestro percitus_, I wrote on; and in about two years and a half +had got together "Songs of the Highways" enough to fill a small octavo +volume, the circumstances of whose birth shall be given hereafter. Whether +I ever attained to anything like an original style, readers must judge for +themselves--the readers of the same volume I mean, for I have inserted none +of those poems in this my autobiography; first, because it seems too like +puffing my own works; and next, because I do not want to injure the as yet +not over great sale of the same. But, if any one's curiosity is so far +excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished, the best advice +which I can give him is, to go forth, and buy all the working-men's +poetry which has appeared during the last twenty years, without favour or +exception; among which he must needs, of course, find mine, and also, I am +happy to say, a great deal which is much better and more instructive than +mine. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS. + + +Those who read my story only for amusement, I advise to skip this chapter. +Those, on the other hand, who really wish to ascertain what working men +actually do suffer--to see whether their political discontent has not its +roots, not merely in fanciful ambition, but in misery and slavery most real +and agonizing--those in whose eyes the accounts of a system, or rather +barbaric absence of all system, which involves starvation, nakedness, +prostitution, and long imprisonment in dungeons worse than the cells of the +Inquisition, will be invested with something at least of tragic interest, +may, I hope, think it worth their while to learn how the clothes which they +wear are made, and listen to a few occasional statistics, which, though +they may seem to the wealthy mere lists of dull figures, are to the workmen +symbols of terrible physical realities--of hunger, degradation, and +despair. [Footnote: Facts still worse than those which Mr. Locke's story +contains have been made public by the _Morning Chronicle_ in a series of +noble letters on "Labour and the Poor"; which we entreat all Christian +people to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." "That will be better +for them," as Mahomet, in similar cases, used to say.] + +Well: one day our employer died. He had been one of the old sort of +fashionable West-end tailors in the fast decreasing honourable trade; +keeping a modest shop, hardly to be distinguished from a dwelling-house, +except by his name on the window blinds. He paid good prices for work, +though not as good, of course, as he had given twenty years before, and +prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His workrooms, as I +have said, were no elysiums; but still, as good, alas! as those of three +tailors out of four. He was proud, luxurious, foppish; but he was honest +and kindly enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had been long +in his employ. At all events, his journeymen could live on what he paid +them. + +But his son, succeeding to the business, determined, like Rehoboam of old, +to go ahead with the times. Fired with the great spirit of the nineteenth +century--at least with that one which is vulgarly considered its especial +glory--he resolved to make haste to be rich. His father had made money very +slowly of late; while dozens, who had begun business long after him, had +now retired to luxurious ease and suburban villas. Why should he remain in +the minority? Why should he not get rich as fast as he could? Why should he +stick to the old, slow-going, honourable trade? Out of some four hundred +and fifty West-end tailors, there were not one hundred left who were +old-fashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down their own profits by +having all their work done at home and at first-hand. Ridiculous scruples! +The government knew none such. Were not the army clothes, the post-office +clothes, the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters, +who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to journeymen +at still lower ones? Why should he pay his men two shillings where the +government paid them one? Were there not cheap houses even at the West-end, +which had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their workmen's +wages? And if the workmen chose to take lower wages, he was not bound +actually to make them a present of more than they asked for? They would go +to the cheapest market for anything they wanted, and so must he. Besides, +wages had really been quite exorbitant. Half his men threw each of them as +much money away in gin and beer yearly, as would pay two workmen at cheap +house. Why was he to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their +extravagance? And charging his customers, too, unnecessarily high +prices--it was really robbing the public! + +Such, I suppose, were some of the arguments which led to an official +announcement, one Saturday night, that our young employer intended to +enlarge his establishment, for the purpose of commencing business in the +"show-trade"; and that, emulous of Messrs. Aaron, Levi, and the rest of +that class, magnificent alterations were to take place in the premises, to +make room for which our workrooms were to be demolished, and that for that +reason--for of course it was only for that reason--all work would in future +be given out, to be made up at the men's own homes. + +Our employer's arguments, if they were such as I suppose, were reasonable +enough according to the present code of commercial morality. But, strange +to say, the auditory, insensible to the delight with which the public would +view the splendid architectural improvements--with taste too grovelling +to appreciate the glories of plate-glass shop-fronts and brass scroll +work--too selfish to rejoice, for its own sake, in the beauty of arabesques +and chandeliers, which, though they never might behold, the astonished +public would--with souls too niggardly to leap for joy at the thought that +gents would henceforth buy the registered guanaco vest, and the patent +elastic omni-seasonum paletot half-a-crown cheaper than ever--or that +needy noblemen would pay three-pound-ten instead of five pounds for their +footmen's liveries--received the news, clod-hearted as they were, in sullen +silence, and actually, when they got into the street, broke out into +murmurs, perhaps into execrations. + +"Silence!" said Crossthwaite; "walls have ears. Come down to the nearest +house of call, and talk it out like men, instead of grumbling in the street +like fish-fags." + +So down we went. Crossthwaite, taking my arm, strode on in moody +silence--once muttering to himself, bitterly-- + +"Oh, yes; all right and natural! What can the little sharks do but follow +the big ones?" + +We took a room, and Crossthwaite coolly saw us all in; and locking the +door, stood with his back against it. + +"Now then, mind, 'One and all,' as the Cornishmen say, and no peaching. If +any man is scoundrel enough to carry tales, I'll--" + +"Do what?" asked Jemmy Downes, who had settled himself on the table, with a +pipe and a pot of porter. "You arn't the king of the Cannibal Islands, as I +know of, to cut a cove's head off?" + +"No; but if a poor man's prayer can bring God's curse down upon a traitor's +head--it may stay on his rascally shoulders till it rots." + +"If ifs and ans were pots and pans. Look at Shechem Isaacs, that sold +penknives in the street six months ago, now a-riding in his own carriage, +all along of turning sweater. If God's curse is like that--I'll be happy to +take any man's share of it." + +Some new idea seemed twinkling in the fellow's cunning bloated face as he +spoke. I, and others also, shuddered at his words; but we all forgot them a +moment afterwards, as Crossthwaite began to speak. + +"We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailor must come to this +at last, on the present system; and we are only lucky in having been spared +so long. You all know where this will end--in the same misery as fifteen +thousand out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now. We shall +become the slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and +sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to +face, as the rest have, ever decreasing prices of labour, ever increasing +profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ +us--arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of hirelings--the competition +of women, and children, and starving Irish--our hours of work will increase +one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half; and in all this +we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more +penury, slavery, misery, as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by +fifties--almost by hundreds--yearly, out of the honourable trade in which +we were brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is +devouring our trade and many others, body and soul. Our wives will be +forced to sit up night and day to help us--our children must labour from +the cradle without chance of going to school, hardly of breathing the +fresh air of heaven,--our boys, as they grow up, must turn beggars or +paupers--our daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable +earnings by prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what +one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there will be no +hope for us. There is no use appealing to government or parliament. I don't +want to talk politics here. I shall keep them for another place. But you +can recollect as well as I can, when a deputation of us went up to a +member of parliament--one that was reputed a philosopher, and a political +economist, and a liberal--and set before him the ever-increasing penury +and misery of our trade, and of those connected with it; you recollect his +answer--that, however glad he would be to help us, it was impossible--he +could not alter the laws of nature--that wages were regulated by the amount +of competition among the men themselves, and that it was no business of +government, or any one else, to interfere in contracts between the employer +and employed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of +political economy, which it was madness and suicide to oppose. He may have +been a wise man. I only know that he was a rich one. Every one speaks well +of the bridge which carries him over. Every one fancies the laws which fill +his pockets to be God's laws. But I say this, If neither government nor +members of parliament can help us, we must help ourselves. Help yourselves, +and heaven will help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance. +One thing we can do--sit still." + +"And starve!" said some one. + +"Yes, and starve! Better starve than sin. I say, it is a sin to give in to +this system. It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are +now choking and strangling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the +black hole of Calcutta. Let those who will turn beasts of prey, and feed +upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves pure. It may be the +law of political civilization, the law of nature, that the rich should eat +up the poor, and the poor eat up each other. Then I here rise up and curse +that law, that civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them, +or they shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased burden on my +fellow-sufferers, I will not live. So help me God! I will take no work +home to my house; and I call upon every one here to combine, and to sign a +protest to that effect." + +"What's the use of that, my good Mr. Crossthwaite?" interrupted some one, +querulously. "Don't you know what came of the strike a few years ago, when +this piece-work and sweating first came in? The masters made fine promises, +and never kept 'em; and the men who stood out had their places filled up +with poor devils who were glad enough to take the work at any price--just +as ours will be. There's no use kicking against the pricks. All the rest +have come to it, and so must we. We must live somehow, and half a loaf is +better than no bread; and even that half loaf will go into other men's +mouths, if we don't snap at it at once. Besides, we can't force others to +strike. We may strike and starve ourselves, but what's the use of a dozen +striking out of 20,000?" + +"Will you sign the protest, gentlemen, or not?" asked Crossthwaite, in a +determined voice. + +Some half-dozen said they would if the others would. + +"And the others won't. Well, after all, one man must take the +responsibility, and I am that man. I will sign the protest by myself. I +will sweep a crossing--I will turn cress-gatherer, rag-picker; I will +starve piecemeal, and see my wife starve with me; but do the wrong thing I +will not! The Cause wants martyrs. If I must be one, I must." + +All this while my mind had been undergoing a strange perturbation. The +notion of escaping that infernal workroom, and the company I met there--of +taking my work home, and thereby, as I hoped, gaining more time for +study--at least, having my books on the spot ready at every odd moment, was +most enticing. I had hailed the proposed change as a blessing to me, till I +heard Crossthwaite's arguments--not that I had not known the facts before; +but it had never struck me till then that it was a real sin against my +class to make myself a party in the system by which they were allowing +themselves (under temptation enough, God knows) to be enslaved. But now +I looked with horror on the gulf of penury before me, into the vortex +of which not only I, but my whole trade, seemed irresistibly sucked. I +thought, with shame and remorse, of the few shillings which I had earned +at various times by taking piecework home, to buy my candles for study. +I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite, as he sat, pale and determined, +watching the excited and querulous discussions among the other workmen. + +"What? So you expect to have time to read? Study after sixteen hours a +day stitching? Study, when you cannot earn money enough to keep you from +wasting and shrinking away day by day? Study, with your heart full of shame +and indignation, fresh from daily insult and injustice? Study, with the +black cloud of despair and penury in front of you? Little time, or heart, +or strength, will you have to study, when you are making the same coats you +make now, at half the price." + +I put my name down beneath Crossthwaite's, on the paper which he handed me, +and went out with him. + +"Ay," he muttered to himself, "be slaves--what you are worthy to be, that +you will be! You dare not combine--you dare not starve--you dare not +die--and therefore you dare not be free! Oh! for six hundred men like +Barbaroux's Marseillois--'who knew how to die!'" + +"Surely, Crossthwaite, if matters were properly represented to the +government, they would not, for their own existence' sake, to put +conscience out of the question, allow such a system to continue growing." + +"Government--government? You a tailor, and not know that government are the +very authors of this system? Not to know that they first set the example, +by getting the army and navy clothes made by contractors, and taking the +lowest tenders? Not to know that the police clothes, the postmen's clothes, +the convicts' clothes, are all contracted for on the same infernal plan, by +sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters' sweaters, till +government work is just the very last, lowest resource to which a poor +starved-out wretch betakes himself to keep body and soul together? Why, +the government prices, in almost every department, are half, and less than +half, the very lowest living price. I tell you, the careless iniquity of +government about these things will come out some day. It will be known, the +whole abomination, and future generations will class it with the tyrannies +of the Roman emperors and the Norman barons. Why, it's a fact, that the +colonels of the regiments--noblemen, most of them--make their own vile +profit out of us tailors--out of the pauperism of the men, the slavery of +the children, the prostitution of the women. They get so much a uniform +allowed them by government to clothe the men with; and then--then, they +let out the jobs to the contractors at less than half what government +give them, and pocket the difference. And then you talk of appealing to +government." + +"Upon my word," I said, bitterly, "we tailors seem to owe the army a double +grudge. They not only keep under other artizans, but they help to starve us +first, and then shoot us, if we complain too loudly." + +"Oh, ho! your blood's getting up, is it? Then you're in the humour to be +told what you have been hankering to know so long--where Mackaye and I go +at night. We'll strike while the iron's hot, and go down to the Chartist +meeting at * * * * *. + +"Pardon me, my dear fellow," I said. "I cannot bear the thought of being +mixed up in conspiracy--perhaps, in revolt and bloodshed. Not that I am +afraid. Heaven knows I am not. But I am too much harassed, miserable, +already. I see too much wretchedness around me, to lend my aid in +increasing the sum of suffering, by a single atom, among rich and poor, +even by righteous vengeance." + +"Conspiracy? Bloodshed? What has that to do with the Charter? It suits the +venal Mammonite press well enough to jumble them together, and cry 'Murder, +rape, and robbery,' whenever the six points are mentioned; but they know, +and any man of common sense ought to know, that the Charter is just as much +an open political question as the Reform Bill, and ten times as much as +Magna Charter was, when it got passed. What have the six points, right or +wrong, to do with the question whether they can be obtained by moral +force, and the pressure of opinion alone, or require what we call ulterior +measures to get them carried? Come along!" + +So with him I went that night. + + * * * * * + +"Well, Alton! where was the treason and murder? Your nose must have been a +sharp one, to smell out any there. Did you hear anything that astonished +your weak mind so very exceedingly, after all?" + +"The only thing that did astonish me was to hear men of my own class--and +lower still, perhaps some of them--speak with such fluency and eloquence. +Such a fund of information--such excellent English--where did they get it +all?" + +"From the God who knows nothing about ranks. They're the unknown great--the +unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas Carlyle would say--whom the flunkeys +aloft have not acknowledged yet--though they'll be forced to, some day, +with a vengeance. Are you convinced, once for all?" + +"I really do not understand political questions, Crossthwaite." + +"Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the rights and the wrongs +of all that? Are the people represented? Are you represented? Do you feel +like a man that's got any one to fight your battle in parliament, my young +friend, eh?" + +"I'm sure I don't know--" + +"Why, what in the name of common sense--what interest or feeling of yours +or mine, or any man's you ever spoke to, except the shopkeeper, do Alderman +A---- or Lord C---- D---- represent? They represent property--and we have +none. They represent rank--we have none. Vested interests--we have +none. Large capitals--those are just what crush us. Irresponsibility of +employers, slavery of the employed, competition among masters, competition +among workmen, that is the system they represent--they preach it, they +glory in it.--Why, it is the very ogre that is eating us all up. They are +chosen by the few, they represent the few, and they make laws for the +many--and yet you don't know whether or not the people are represented!" + +We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre; it was just half-price +time--and the beggary and rascality of London were pouring in to their low +amusement, from the neighbouring gin palaces and thieves' cellars. A herd +of ragged boys, vomiting forth slang, filth, and blasphemy, pushed past us, +compelling us to take good care of our pockets. + +"Look there! look at the amusements, the training, the civilization, which +the government permits to the children of the people! These licensed pits +of darkness, traps of temptation, profligacy, and ruin, triumphantly +yawning night after night--and then tell me that the people who see their +children thus kidnapped into hell are represented by a government who +licenses such things!" + +"Would a change in the franchise cure that?" + +"Household suffrage mightn't--but give us the Charter, and we'll see about +it! Give us the Charter, and we'll send workmen, into parliament that shall +soon find out whether something better can't be put in the way of the ten +thousand boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution, than +the tender mercies of the Victoria--a pretty name! They say the Queen's +a good woman--and I don't doubt it. I wonder often if she knows what her +precious namesake here is like." + +"But really, I cannot see how a mere change in representation can cure such +things as that." + +"Why, didn't they tell us, before the Reform Bill, that extension of the +suffrage was to cure everything? And how can you have too much of a good +thing? We've only taken them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all +politicians been preaching for years that England's national greatness was +all owing to her political institutions--to Magna Charta, and the Bill of +Rights, and representative parliaments, and all that? It was but the +other day I got hold of some Tory paper, that talked about the English +constitution, and the balance of queen, lords, and commons, as the +'Talismanic Palladium' of the country. 'Gad, we'll see if a move onward in +the same line won't better the matter. If the balance of classes is such a +blessed thing, the sooner we get the balance equal, the better; for it's +rather lopsided just now, no one can deny. So, representative institutions +are the talismanic palladium of the nation, are they? The palladium of the +classes that have them, I dare say; and that's the very best reason why the +classes that haven't got 'em should look out for the same palladium for +themselves. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it? +We'll try--we'll see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power +all of a sudden since '32--whether we can't rub the magic ring a little for +ourselves and call up genii to help us out of the mire, as the shopkeepers +and the gentlemen have done." + + * * * * * + +From that night I was a Chartist, heart and soul--and so were a million and +a half more of the best artisans in England--at least, I had no reason to +be ashamed of my company. Yes; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper +classes at their word; bowed down to the idol of political institutions, +and pinned my hopes of salvation on "the possession of one ten-thousandth +part of a talker in the national palaver." True, I desired the Charter, at +first (as I do, indeed, at this moment), as a means to glorious ends--not +only because it would give a chance of elevation, a free sphere of action, +to lowly worth and talent; but because it was the path to reforms--social, +legal, sanatory, educational--to which the veriest Tory--certainly not the +great and good Lord Ashley--would not object. But soon, with me, and I am +afraid with many, many more, the means became, by the frailty of poor human +nature, an end, an idol in itself. I had so made up my mind that it was +the only method of getting what I wanted, that I neglected, alas! but too +often, to try the methods which lay already by me. "If we had but the +Charter"--was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses, procrastinations. "If +we had but the Charter"--I should be good, and free, and happy. Fool that I +was! It was within, rather than without, that I needed reform. + +And so I began to look on man (and too many of us, I am afraid, are doing +so) as the creature and puppet of circumstances--of the particular outward +system, social or political, in which he happens to find himself. An +abominable heresy, no doubt; but, somehow, it appears to me just the same +as Benthamites, and economists, and high-churchmen, too, for that matter, +have been preaching for the last twenty years with great applause from +their respective parties. One set informs the world that it is to be +regenerated by cheap bread, free trade, and that peculiar form of the +"freedom of industry" which, in plain language, signifies "the despotism +of capital"; and which, whatever it means, is merely some outward system, +circumstance, or "dodge" _about_ man, and not _in_ him. Another party's +nostrum is more churches, more schools, more clergymen--excellent things in +their way--better even than cheap bread, or free trade, provided only that +they are excellent--that the churches, schools, clergymen, are good ones. +But the party of whom I am speaking seem to us workmen to consider the +quality quite a secondary consideration, compared with the quantity. They +expect the world to be regenerated, not by becoming more a Church--none +would gladlier help them in bringing that about than the Chartists +themselves, paradoxical as it may seem--but by being dosed somewhat more +with a certain "Church system," circumstance, or "dodge." For my part, I +seem to have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not more +of any system, good or bad, but simply more of the Spirit of God. + +About the supposed omnipotence of the Charter, I have found out my mistake. +I believe no more in "Morison's-Pill-remedies," as Thomas Carlyle calls +them. Talismans are worthless. The age of spirit-compelling spells, whether +of parchment or carbuncle, is past--if, indeed, it ever existed. The +Charter will no more make men good, than political economy, or the +observance of the Church Calendar--a fact which we working men, I really +believe, have, under the pressure of wholesome defeat and God-sent +affliction, found out sooner than our more "enlightened" fellow-idolaters. +But at that time, as I have confessed already, we took our betters at their +word, and believed in Morison's Pills. Only, as we looked at the world from +among a class of facts somewhat different from theirs, we differed from +them proportionably as to our notions of the proper ingredients in the said +Pill. + + * * * * * + +But what became of our protest? + +It was received--and disregarded. As for turning us off, we had, _de +facto_, like Coriolanus, banished the Romans, turned our master off. All +the other hands, some forty in number, submitted and took the yoke upon +them, and went down into the house of bondage, knowing whither they went. +Every man of them is now a beggar, compared with what he was then. Many are +dead in the prime of life of consumption, bad food and lodging, and the +peculiar diseases of our trade. Some have not been heard of lately--we +fancy them imprisoned in some sweaters' dens--but thereby hangs a tale, +whereof more hereafter. + +But it was singular, that every one of the six who had merely professed +their conditional readiness to sign the protest, were contumeliously +discharged the next day, without any reason being assigned. It was evident +that there had been a traitor at the meeting; and every one suspected Jemmy +Downes, especially as he fell into the new system with suspiciously strange +alacrity. But it was as impossible to prove the offence against him, as to +punish him for it. Of that wretched man, too, and his subsequent career, I +shall have somewhat to say hereafter. Verily, there is a God who judgeth +the earth! + +But now behold me and my now intimate and beloved friend, Crossthwaite, +with nothing to do--a gentlemanlike occupation; but, unfortunately, in our +class, involving starvation. What was to be done? We applied for work at +several "honourable shops"; but at all we received the same answer. Their +trade was decreasing--the public ran daily more and more to the cheap +show-shops--and they themselves were forced, in order to compete with these +latter, to put more and more of their work out at contract prices. _Facilis +descensus Averni!_ Having once been hustled out of the serried crowd of +competing workmen, it was impossible to force our way in again. So, a +week or ten days past, our little stocks of money were exhausted. I was +down-hearted at once; but Crossthwaite bore up gaily enough. + +"Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling over it. And, thank +God, I have no children, and never intend to have, if I can keep true to +myself, till the good times come." + +"Oh! Crossthwaite, are not children a blessing?" + +"Would they be a blessing to me now? No, my lad.--Let those bring slaves +into the world who will! I will never beget children to swell the numbers +of those who are trampling each other down in the struggle for daily +bread, to minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich man's +luxury--perhaps his lust." + +"Then you believe in the Malthusian doctrines?" + +"I believe them to be an infernal lie, Alton Locke; though good and wise +people like Miss Martineau may sometimes be deluded into preaching them. I +believe there's room on English soil for twice the number there is now; and +when we get the Charter we'll prove it; we'll show that God meant living +human heads and hands to be blessings and not curses, tools and not +burdens. But in such times as these, let those who have wives be as though +they had none--as St. Paul said, when he told his people under the Roman +Emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of the people +should keep himself as free from encumbrances as he can just now. He win +find it all the more easy to dare and suffer for the people, when their +turn comes--" + +And he set his teeth, firmly, almost savagely. + +"I think I can earn a few shillings, now and then, by writing for a paper I +know of. If that won't do, I must take up agitating for a trade, and live +by spouting, as many a Tory member as well as Radical ones do. A man may do +worse, for he may do nothing. At all events, my only chance now is to +help on the Charter; for the sooner it comes the better for me. And if I +die--why, the little woman won't be long in coming after me, I know that +well; and there's a tough business got well over for both of us!" + +"Hech," said Sandy, + + "To every man + Death comes but once a life-- + +"as my countryman, Mr. Macaulay, says, in thae gran' Roman ballants o' his. +But for ye, Alton, laddie, ye're owre young to start off in the People's +Church Meelitant, sae just bide wi' me, and the barrel o' meal in the +corner there winna waste, nae mair than it did wi' the widow o' Zareptha; a +tale which coincides sae weel wi' the everlasting righteousness, that I'm +at times no inclined to consider it a'thegither mythical." + +But I, with thankfulness which vented itself through my eyes, finding my +lips alone too narrow for it, refused to eat the bread of idleness. + +"Aweel, then, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles; I'm +getting auld and stiff, and ha' need o' help i' the business." + +"No," I said; "you say so out of kindness; but if you can afford no greater +comforts than these, you cannot afford to keep me in addition to yourself." + +"Hech, then! How do ye ken that the auld Scot eats a' he makes? I was na +born the spending side o' Tweed, my man. But gin ye daur, why dinna ye pack +up your duds, and yer poems wi' them, and gang till your cousin i' the +university? he'll surely put you in the way o' publishing them. He's bound +to it by blude; and there's na shame in asking him to help you towards +reaping the fruits o' yer ain labours. A few punds on a bond for repayment +when the addition was sauld, noo,--I'd do that for mysel; but I'm thinking +ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers. Dinna mind your independence; +it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken, and the bit ballants will be their +money's worth, I'll warrant, and tell them a wheen facts they're no that +weel acquentit wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist?" + +"Why not go to my uncle?" + +"Puir sugar-and-spice-selling bailie body! is there aught in his ledger +about poetry, and the incommensurable value o' the products o' genius? Gang +till the young scholar; he's a canny one, too, and he'll ken it to be worth +his while to fash himsel a wee anent it." + +So I packed up my little bundle, and lay awake all that night in a fever +of expectation about the as yet unknown world of green fields and woods +through which my road to Cambridge lay. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +"THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE." + + +I may be forgiven, surely, if I run somewhat into detail about this my +first visit to the country. + +I had, as I have said before, literally never been further afield than +Fulham or Battersea Rise. One Sunday evening, indeed, I had got as far as +Wandsworth Common; but it was March, and, to my extreme disappointment, the +heath was not in flower. + +But, usually, my Sundays had been spent entirely in study; which to me was +rest, so worn out were both my body and my mind with the incessant drudgery +of my trade, and the slender fare to which I restricted myself. Since I had +lodged with Mackaye certainly my food had been better. I had not required +to stint my appetite for money wherewith to buy candles, ink, and pens. +My wages, too, had increased with my years, and altogether I found myself +gaining in strength, though I had no notion how much I possessed till I set +forth on this walk to Cambridge. + +It was a glorious morning at the end of May; and when. I escaped from +the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I found the sky a sheet of +cloudless blue. How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses, which +lined the road for miles--the great roots of London, running far out +into the country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food and +merchandise and human beings--the sap of the huge metropolitan life-tree! +How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas, till +hope deferred made the heart sick, and the country seemed--like the place +where the rainbow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana +settler--always a little farther off! How between gaps in the houses, right +and left, I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields, shut from me by +dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over +fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and +speculate on the name of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then +hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead--something +really worth stopping to look at--till the houses thickened again into a +street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the midst of a town! +And then more villas and palings; and then a village;--when would they +stop, those endless houses? + +At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I passed began to look +more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, +cattle-yards and farm-buildings appeared; and right and left, far away, +spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and cornfields. Oh, the joy! +The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate +hue and scent of the fresh clover-fields, the steep clay banks where I +stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child,--and +then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank towards +the Red House--and hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my +eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the chequered squares +of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green +haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. +And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the +growing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence! I listened to the +stillness; for noise had been my native element; I had become in London +quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire +and dirt. And now, for the first time in my life, the crushing, confusing +hubbub had flowed away, and left my brain calm and free. How I felt at that +moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as new to me, +as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position. I cannot +help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement, physical as well +as moral, is to blame for very much of the working man's restlessness and +fierceness. As it was, I felt that every step forward, every breath of +fresh air, gave me new life. I had gone fifteen miles before I recollected +that, for the first time for many months, I had not coughed since I rose. + +So on I went, down the broad, bright road, which seemed to beckon me +forward into the unknown expanses of human life. + + The world was all before me, where to choose, + +and I saw it both with my eyes and my imagination, in the temper of a boy +broke loose from school. My heart kept holiday. I loved and blessed the +birds which flitted past me, and the cows which lay dreaming on the sward. +I recollect stopping with delight at a picturesque descent into the road, +to watch a nursery-garden, full of roses of every shade, from brilliant +yellow to darkest purple; and as I wondered at the innumerable variety of +beauties which man's art had developed from a few poor and wild species, it +seemed to me the most delightful life on earth, to follow in such a +place the primaeval trade of gardener Adam; to study the secrets of the +flower-world, the laws of soil and climate; to create new species, and +gloat over the living fruit of one's own science and perseverance. And then +I recollected the tailor's shop, and the Charter, and the starvation, and +the oppression which I had left behind, and ashamed of my own selfishness, +went hurrying on again. + +At last I came to a wood--the first real wood that I had ever seen; not a +mere party of stately park trees growing out of smooth turf, but a real +wild copse; tangled branches and grey stems fallen across each other; deep, +ragged underwood of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' feathers, and gay +beds of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting about +them, and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough to bough--a poor, +commonplace bit of copse, I dare say, in the world's eyes, but to me a +fairy wilderness of beautiful forms, mysterious gleams and shadows, teeming +with manifold life. As I stood looking wistfully over the gate, alternately +at the inviting vista of the green-embroidered path, and then at the grim +notice over my head, "All trespassers prosecuted," a young man came up +the ride, dressed in velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, sufficiently +bedrabbled with mud. A fishing-rod and basket bespoke him some sort of +destroyer, and I saw in a moment that he was "a gentleman." After all, +there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose +class no dirt or rags could hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I +have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the +gentlemen--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority +in that point. But not, please God, for ever. Give us the same air, +water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this +"haggardness," this "coarseness," &c., &c., for the list is too long to +specify, be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people. + +"May I go into your wood?" asked I at a venture, curiosity conquering +pride. + +"Well! what do you want there, my good fellow?" + +"To see what a wood is like--I never was in one in my life." + +"Humph! well--you may go in for that, and welcome. Never was in a wood in +his life--poor devil!" + +"Thank you!" quoth I. And I slowly clambered over the gate. He put his hand +carelessly on the top rail, vaulted over it like a deer, and then turned to +stare at me. + +"Hullo! I say--I forgot--don't go far in, or ramble up and down, or you'll +disturb the pheasants." + +I thanked him again for what license he had given me--went in, and lay down +by the path-side. + +Here, I suppose, by the rules of modern art, a picturesque description of +the said wood should follow; but I am the most incompetent person in the +world to write it. And, indeed, the whole scene was so novel to me, that I +had no time to analyse; I could only enjoy. I recollect lying on my face +and fingering over the delicately cut leaves of the weeds, and wondering +whether the people who lived in the country thought them as wonderful and +beautiful as I did;--and then I recollected the thousands whom I had left +behind, who, like me, had never seen the green face of God's earth; and the +answer of the poor gamin in St. Giles's, who, when he was asked what the +country was, answered, "_The yard where the gentlemen live when they go out +of town_"--significant that, and pathetic;--then I wondered whether the +time would ever come when society would be far enough advanced to open to +even such as he a glimpse, if it were only once a year, of the fresh, clean +face of God's earth;--and then I became aware of a soft mysterious hum, +above and around me, and turned on my back to look whence it proceeded, +and saw the leaves gold-green and transparent in the sunlight, quivering +against the deep heights of the empyrean blue; and hanging in the sunbeams +that pierced the foliage, a thousand insects, like specks of fire, that +poised themselves motionless on thrilling wings, and darted away, and +returned to hang motionless again;--and I wondered what they eat, and +whether they thought about anything, and whether they enjoyed the +sunlight;--and then that brought back to me the times when I used to lie +dreaming in my crib on summer mornings, and watched the flies dancing reels +between me and the ceilings;--and that again brought the thought of Susan +and my mother; and I prayed for them--not sadly--I could not be sad +there;--and prayed that we might all meet again some day and live happily +together; perhaps in the country, where I could write poems in peace; and +then, by degrees, my sentences and thoughts grew incoherent, and in happy, +stupid animal comfort, I faded away into a heavy sleep, which lasted an +hour or more, till I was awakened by the efforts of certain enterprising +great black and red ants, who were trying to found a small Algeria in my +left ear. + +I rose and left the wood, and a gate or two on, stopped again to look +at the same sportsman fishing in a clear silver brook. I could not help +admiring with a sort of childish wonder the graceful and practised aim with +which he directed his tiny bait, and called up mysterious dimples on the +surface, which in a moment increased to splashings and stragglings of a +great fish, compelled, as if by some invisible spell, to follow the point +of the bending rod till he lay panting on the bank. I confess, in spite of +all my class prejudices against "game-preserving aristocrats," I almost +envied the man; at least I seemed to understand a little of the universally +attractive charms which those same outwardly contemptible field sports +possess; the fresh air, fresh fields and copses, fresh running brooks, the +exercise, the simple freedom, the excitement just sufficient to keep alive +expectation and banish thought.--After all, his trout produced much the +same mood in him as my turnpike-road did in me. And perhaps the man did not +go fishing or shooting every day. The laws prevented him from shooting, at +least, all the year round; so sometimes there might be something in which +he made himself of use. An honest, jolly face too he had--not without +thought and strength in it. "Well, it is a strange world," said I to +myself, "where those who can, need not; and those who cannot, must!" + +Then he came close to the gate, and I left it just in time to see a little +group arrive at it--a woman of his own rank, young, pretty, and simply +dressed, with a little boy, decked out as a Highlander, on a shaggy +Shetland pony, which his mother, as I guessed her to be, was leading. And +then they all met, and the little fellow held up a basket of provisions +to his father, who kissed him across the gate, and hung his creel of fish +behind the saddle, and patted the mother's shoulder, as she looked up +lovingly and laughingly in his face. Altogether, a joyous, genial bit +of--Nature? Yes, Nature. Shall I grudge simple happiness to the few, +because it is as yet, alas! impossible for the many. + +And yet the whole scene contrasted so painfully with me--with my past, +my future, my dreams, my wrongs, that I could not look at it; and with a +swelling heart I moved on--all the faster because I saw they were looking +at me and talking of me, and the fair wife threw after me a wistful, +pitying glance, which I was afraid might develop itself into some offer of +food or money--a thing which I scorned and dreaded, because it involved the +trouble of a refusal. + +Then, as I walked on once more, my heart smote me. If they had wished to be +kind, why had I grudged them the opportunity of a good deed? At all events, +I might have asked their advice. In a natural and harmonious state, when +society really means brotherhood, a man could go up to any stranger, to +give and receive, if not succour, yet still experience and wisdom: and was +I not bound to tell them what I knew? was sure that they did not know? Was +I not bound to preach the cause of my class wherever I went? Here were +kindly people who, for aught I knew, would do right the moment they were +told where it was wanted; if there was an accursed artificial gulf between +their class and mine, had I any right to complain of it, as long as I +helped to keep it up by my false pride and surly reserve? No! I would speak +my mind henceforth--I would testify of what I saw and knew of the wrongs, +if not of the rights of the artisan, before whomsoever I might come. Oh! +valiant conclusion of half an hour's self-tormenting scruples! How I kept +it, remains to be shown. + +I really fear that I am getting somewhat trivial and prolix; but there was +hardly an incident in my two days' tramp which did not give me some small +fresh insight into the _terra incognita_ of the country; and there may be +those among my readers, to whom it is not uninteresting to look, for once, +at even the smallest objects with a cockney workman's eyes. + +Well, I trudged on--and the shadows lengthened, and I grew footsore and +tired; but every step was new, and won me forward with fresh excitement for +my curiosity. + +At one village I met a crowd of little, noisy, happy boys and girls pouring +out of a smart new Gothic school-house. I could not resist the temptation +of snatching a glance through the open door. I saw on the walls maps, +music, charts, and pictures. How I envied those little urchins! A solemn, +sturdy elder, in a white cravat, evidently the parson of the parish, was +patting children's heads, taking down names, and laying down the law to a +shrewd, prim young schoolmaster. + +Presently, as I went up the village, the clergyman strode past +me, brandishing a thick stick and humming a chant, and joined a +motherly-looking wife, who, basket on arm, was popping in and out of the +cottages, looking alternately serious and funny, cross and kindly--I +suppose, according to the sayings and doings of the folks within. + +"Come," I thought, "this looks like work at least." And as I went out +of the village, I accosted a labourer, who was trudging my way, fork on +shoulder, and asked him if that was the parson and his wife? + +I was surprised at the difficulty with which I got into conversation with +the man; at his stupidity, feigned or real, I could not tell which; at the +dogged, suspicious reserve with which he eyed me, and asked me whether I +was "one of they parts"? and whether I was a Londoner, and what I wanted on +the tramp, and so on, before he seemed to think it safe to answer a single +question. He seemed, like almost every labourer I ever met, to have +something on his mind; to live in a state of perpetual fear and +concealment. When, however, he found I was both a cockney and a passer-by, +he began to grow more communicative, and told me, "Ees--that were the +parson, sure enough." + +"And what sort of a man was he?" + +"Oh! he was a main kind man to the poor; leastwise, in the matter of +visiting 'em, and praying with 'em, and getting 'em to put into clubs, and +such like; and his lady too. Not that there was any fault to find with the +man about money--but 'twasn't to be expected of him." + +"Why, was he not rich?" + +"Oh, rich enough to the likes of us. But his own tithes here arn't more +than a thirty pounds we hears tell; and if he hadn't summat of his own, he +couldn't do not nothing by the poor; as it be, he pays for that ere school +all to his own pocket, next part. All the rest o' the tithes goes to some +great lord or other--they say he draws a matter of a thousand a year out of +the parish, and not a foot ever he sot into it; and that's the way with a +main lot o' parishes, up and down." + +This was quite a new fact to me. "And what sort of folks were the parsons +all round." + +"Oh, some of all sorts, good and bad. About six and half a dozen. There's +two or three nice young gentlemen come'd round here now, but they're all +what's-'em-a-call it?--some sort o' papishes;--leastwise, they has prayers +in the church every day, and doesn't preach the Gospel, no how, I hears +by my wife, and she knows all about it, along of going to meeting. Then +there's one over thereaway, as had to leave his living--he knows why. He +got safe over seas. If he had been a poor man, he'd been in * * * * * +gaol, safe enough, and soon enough. Then there's two or three as goes +a-hunting--not as I sees no harm in that; if a man's got plenty of money, +he ought to enjoy himself, in course: but still he can't be here and there +too, to once. Then there's two or three as is bad in their healths, or +thinks themselves so--or else has livings summer' else; and they lives +summer' or others, and has curates. Main busy chaps is they curates, +always, and wonderful hands to preach; but then, just as they gets a little +knowing like at it, and folks gets to like 'em, and run to hear 'em, off +they pops to summat better; and in course they're right to do so; and so +we country-folks get nought but the young colts, afore they're broke, you +see." + +"And what sort of a preacher was his parson?" + +"Oh, he preached very good Gospel, not that he went very often himself, +acause he couldn't make out the meaning of it; he preached too high, like. +But his wife said it was uncommon good Gospel; and surely when he come to +visit a body, and talked plain English, like, not sermon-ways, he was a +very pleasant man to heer, and his lady uncommon kind to nurse folk. They +sot up with me and my wife, they two did, two whole nights, when we was in +the fever, afore the officer could get us a nurse." + +"Well," said I, "there are some good parsons left." + +"Oh, yes; there's some very good ones--each one after his own way; and +there'd be more on 'em, if they did but know how bad we labourers was off. +Why bless ye, I mind when they was very different. A new parson is a mighty +change for the better, mostwise, we finds. Why, when I was a boy, we never +had no schooling. And now mine goes and learns singing and jobrafy, and +ciphering, and sich like. Not that I sees no good in it. We was a sight +better off in the old times, when there weren't no schooling. Schooling +harn't made wages rise, nor preaching neither." + +"But surely," I said, "all this religious knowledge ought to give you +comfort, even if you are badly off." + +"Oh! religion's all very well for them as has time for it; and a very good +thing--we ought all to mind our latter end. But I don't see how a man can +hear sermons with an empty belly; and there's so much to fret a man, now, +and he's so cruel tired coming home o' nights, he can't nowise go to pray a +lot, as gentlefolks does." + +"But are you so ill off?" + +"Oh! he'd had a good harvesting enough; but then he owed all that for he's +rent; and he's club money wasn't paid up, nor he's shop. And then, with +he's wages"--(I forget the sum--under ten shillings)--"how could a man +keep his mouth full, when he had five children! And then, folks is so +unmarciful--I'll just tell you what they says to me, now, last time I was +over at the board--" + +And thereon he rambled off into a long jumble of medical-officers, and +relieving-officers, and Farmer This, and Squire That, which indicated a +mind as ill-educated as discontented. He cursed or rather grumbled at--for +he had not spirit, it seemed, to curse anything--the New Poor Law; because +it "ate up the poor, flesh and bone";--bemoaned the "Old Law," when "the +Vestry was forced to give a man whatsomdever he axed for, and if they +didn't, he'd go to the magistrates and make 'em, and so sure as a man got a +fresh child, he went and got another loaf allowed him next vestry, like a +Christian;"--and so turned through a gate, and set to work forking up some +weeds on a fallow, leaving me many new thoughts to digest. + +That night, I got to some town or other, and there found a night's lodging, +good enough for a walking traveller. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +CAMBRIDGE. + + +When I started again next morning, I found myself so stiff and footsore, +that I could hardly put one leg before the other, much less walk upright. I +was really quite in despair, before the end of the first mile; for I had no +money to pay for a lift on the coach, and I knew, besides, that they would +not be passing that way for several hours to come. So, with aching back and +knees, I made shift to limp along, bent almost double, and ended by sitting +down for a couple of hours, and looking about me, in a country which would +have seemed dreary enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated +captive, such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than ever +from my rest, when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge, drawn by a stout +cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-looking farmer, who stared at me as +he passed, went on, looked back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and +at last came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect-- + +"Whor be ganging, then, boh?" + +"To Cambridge." + +"Thew'st na git there that gate. Be'est thee honest man?" + +"I hope so," said I, somewhat indignantly. + +"What's trade?" + +"A tailor," I said. + +"Tailor!--guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn't accoostomed to tramp, then?" + +"I never was out of London before," said I, meekly--for I was too worn-out +to be cross--lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed. + +"Oi'll gie thee lift; dee yow joomp in. Gae on, powney! Tailor, then! Oh! +ah! tailor, saith he." + +I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, looking up out of +the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad-cloth by my side, and +comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own +wasted, white, woman-like fingers. + +I found the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out of me all my +story--questioned me about the way "Lunnon folks" lived, and whether they +got ony shooting or "pattening"--whereby I found he meant skating--and +broke in, every now and then, with ejaculations of childish wonder, and +clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labour and London misery. + +"Oh, father, father!--I wonders they bears it. Us'n in the fens wouldn't +stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit, and roit, and tak' oot the +dook-gunes to un--they would, as they did five-and-twenty year agone. Never +to goo ayond the housen!--never to go ayond the housen! Kill me in a three +months, that would--bor', then!" + +"Are you a farmer?" I asked, at last, thinking that my turn for questioning +was come. + +"I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never +wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony +hoondred year. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they +fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head--what +was the name of um?" + +"Charles the First?" + +"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was, +down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head +of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw +'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I +wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country +through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please +any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a +barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and +vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes, +to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty +pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as +dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch +runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!" + +And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and +chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious +tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;" +and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came +to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and +insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented +liquors. + +"Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o' cowd i' the fen, that gate, yow +would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak' spirits down thor, tak' their +pennord o' elevation, then--women-folk especial." + +"What's elevation?" + +"Oh! ho! ho!--yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, +and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the +counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her +pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps +women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains." + +"But what is it?" + +"Opium, bor' alive, opium!" + +"But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of +drunkenness." + +"Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can +bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst +ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?" + +I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with +us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish +lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife. + +"Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more." + +The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, +and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of +dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence. + +"Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?" + +"How lost?" + +"Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one +o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?" + +"I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from +our shop, because he wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as +they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's--and then to +another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six +months, and can hear no news of him." + +"Aw! guide us! And what'n, think yow, be gone wi' un?" + +"I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has pawned his clothes, +as dozens of them do, for food, and so can't get out." + +"Pawned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had +work, can't he get victuals?" + +"Oh!" I said, "there's many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen +hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes, +finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if +he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay +there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've known half +a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where +they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just space to sit and work +between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing God's sun, +for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-butter, +and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very +bone." + +"Oh, my God! my God!" said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper +tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others' sorrow was likely to have +produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his. +I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter. + +"Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now--what was a like, +in the Lord's name! what was a like unto?" + +"Very tall and bony," I answered. + +"Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?--but a was starved, a was a' +thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?--and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a, +like a lass's?" + +"The man I knew had red hair," quoth I. + +"Ow, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like +gowlden guineas! And thou knew'st Billy Porter! To think o' that, noo."-- + +Another long silence. + +"Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now, +there was a mon 'ud gie--may be five pund--ten pund--twenty pund, by +* * *--twenty pund down, for to ha' him brocht home safe and soun'--Could +yow do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?" + +"I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all. +But have you no guess as to where he is?" + +He shook his head sadly. + +"We--that's to zay, they as wants un--hav'n't heerd tell of un vor this +three year--three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was--" And he wiped his +eyes with his cuff. + +"If you will tell me all about him, and where he was last heard of, I will +do all I can to find him." + +"Will ye, noo? will ye? The Lord bless ye for zaying that." And he grasped +my hand in his great iron fist, and fairly burst out crying. + +"Was he a relation of yours?" I asked, gently. + +"My bairn--my bairn--my eldest bairn. Dinnot yow ax me no moor--dinnot +then, bor'. Gie on, yow powney, and yow goo leuk vor un." + +Another long silence. + +"I've a been to Lunnon, looking vor un." + +Another silence. + +"I went up and down, up and down, day and night, day and night, to all +pot-houses as I could zee; vor, says I, he was a'ways a main chap to drink, +he was. Oh, deery me! and I never cot zight on un--and noo I be most spent, +I be."-- + +And he pulled up at another public-house, and tried this time a glass of +brandy. He stopped, I really think, at every inn between that place and +Cambridge, and at each tried some fresh compound; but his head seemed, from +habit, utterly fire-proof. + +At last, we neared Cambridge, and began to pass groups of gay horsemen, and +then those strange caps and gowns--ugly and unmeaning remnant of obsolete +fashion. + +The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of * * * College, and +there dropped me, after I had given him my address, entreating me to "vind +the bairn, and coom to zee him down to Metholl. But dinnot goo ax for +Farmer Porter--they's all Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house +Bob--that's me; and if I barn't to home, ax for Mucky Billy--that's my +brawther--we're all gotten our names down to ven; and if he barn't to home, +yow ax for Frog-hall--that's where my sister do live; and they'll all veed +ye, and lodge ye, and welcome come. We be all like one, doon in the ven; +and do ye, do ye, vind my bairn!" And he trundled on, down the narrow +street. + +I was soon directed, by various smart-looking servants, to my cousin's +rooms; and after a few mistakes, and wandering up and down noble courts and +cloisters, swarming with gay young men, whose jaunty air and dress seemed +strangely out of keeping with the stem antique solemnity of the Gothic +buildings around, I espied my cousin's name over a door; and, uncertain how +he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half-apologetic knock, which, +was answered by a loud "Come in!" and I entered on a scene, even more +incongruous than anything I had seen outside. + +"If we can only keep away from Jesus as far as the corner, I don't care." + +"If we don't run into that first Trinity before the willows, I shall care +with a vengeance." + +"If we don't it's a pity," said my cousin. "Wadham ran up by the side of +that first Trinity yesterday, and he said that they were as well gruelled +as so many posters, before they got to the stile." + +This unintelligible, and to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation, +proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned +sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in +shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; +while my cousin, dressed like "a fancy waterman," sat on the back of a +sofa, puffing away at a huge meerschaum. + +"Alton! why, what wind on earth has blown you here?" + +By the tone, the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what wind would be +kind enough to blow me back again. But he recovered his self-possession in +a moment. + +"Delighted to see you! Where's your portmanteau? Oh--left it at the Bull! +Ah! I see. Very well, we'll send the gyp for it in a minute, and order some +luncheon. We're just going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can't stop, but +we shall all be fined--not a moment to lose. I'll send you in luncheon as +I go through the butteries; then, perhaps, you'd like to come down and see +the race. Ask the gyp to tell you the way. Now, then, follow your noble +captain, gentlemen--to glory and a supper." And he bustled out with his +crew. + +While I was staring about the room, at the jumble of Greek books, +boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty women, a shrewd-faced, smart +man entered, much better dressed than myself. + +"What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-soup, sir? Stilton +cheese, sir, or Cheshire, sir? Old Stilton, sir, just now." + +Fearing lest many words might betray my rank--and, strange to say, though +I should not have been afraid of confessing myself an artisan before the +"gentlemen" who had just left the room, I was ashamed to have my low estate +discovered, and talked over with his compeers, by the flunkey who waited on +them--I answered, "Anything--I really don't care," in as aristocratic and +off-hand a tone as I could assume. + +"Porter or ale, sir?" + +"Water," without a "thank you," I am ashamed to say for I was not at that +time quite sure whether it was well-bred to be civil to servants. + +The man vanished, and reappeared with a savoury luncheon, silver forks, +snowy napkins, smart plates--I felt really quite a gentleman. + +He gave me full directions as to my "way to the boats, sir;" and I started +out much refreshed; passed through back streets, dingy, dirty, and +profligate-looking enough; out upon wide meadows, fringed with enormous +elms; across a ferry; through a pleasant village, with its old grey church +and spire; by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries. I had +walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought, +fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend +of the river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite +bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to +the water's side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of +the stream, light, gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the +race,--altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I +had beheld in my little travels. I stopped to gaze; and among the ladies on +the lawn opposite, caught sight of a figure--my heart leapt into my mouth! +Was it she at last? It was too far to distinguish features; the dress was +altogether different--but was it not she? I saw her move across the lawn, +and take the arm of a tall, venerable-looking man; and his dress was the +same as that of the Dean, at the Dulwich Gallery--was it? was it not? +To have found her, and a river between us! It was ludicrously +miserable--miserably ludicrous. Oh, that accursed river, which debarred me +from certainty, from bliss! I would have plunged across--but there were +three objections--first, that I could not swim; next, what could I do when +I had crossed? and thirdly, it might not be she after all. + +And yet I was certain--instinctively certain--that it was she, the idol of +my imagination for years. If I could not see her features under that little +white bonnet, I could imagine them there; they flashed up in my memory as +fresh as ever. Did she remember my features, as I did hers? Would she know +me again? Had she ever even thought of me, from that day to this? Fool! +But there I stood, fascinated, gazing across the river, heedless of the +racing-boats, and the crowd, and the roar that was rushing up to me at the +rate of ten miles an hour, and in a moment more, had caught me, and swept +me away with it, whether I would or not, along the towing-path, by the side +of the foremost boats. + +And yet, after a few moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge +passion for boat-racing, or at the excitement of the spectators. "_Honi +soit qui mal y pense_." It was a noble sport--a sight such as could only be +seen in England--some hundred of young men, who might, if they had chosen, +been lounging effeminately about the streets, subjecting themselves +voluntarily to that intense exertion, for the mere pleasure of toil. +The true English stuff came out there; I felt that, in spite of all +my prejudices--the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered at +Waterloo--which has created a Birmingham and a Manchester, and colonized +every quarter of the globe--that grim, earnest, stubborn energy, which, +since the days of the old Romans, the English possess alone of all the +nations of the earth. I was as proud of the gallant young fellows as if +they had been my brothers--of their courage and endurance (for one could +see that it was no child's-play, from the pale faces, and panting lips), +their strength and activity, so fierce and yet so cultivated, smooth, +harmonious, as oar kept time with oar, and every back rose and fell in +concert--and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely +by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse +of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the long snake-like eight +oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake, the grim, breathless +silence of the straining rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears +swelled into my eyes; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman; and when I +caught sight of my cousin, pulling stroke to the second boat in the long +line, with set teeth and flashing eyes, the great muscles on his bare arms +springing up into knots at every rapid stroke, I ran and shouted among the +maddest and the foremost. + +But I soon tired, and, footsore as I was, began to find my strength fail +me. I tried to drop behind, but found it impossible in the press. At last, +quite out of breath, I stopped; and instantly received a heavy blow from +behind, which threw me on my face; and a fierce voice shouted in my ear, +"Confound you, sir! don't you know better than to do that?" I looked up, +and saw a man twice as big as myself sprawling over me, headlong down the +bank, toward the river, whither I followed him, but alas! not on my feet, +but rolling head over heels. On the very brink he stuck his heels into the +turf, and stopped dead, amid a shout of, "Well saved, Lynedale!" I did not +stop; but rolled into some two-feet water, amid the laughter and shouts of +the men. + +I scrambled out, and limped on, shaking with wet and pain, till I was +stopped by a crowd which filled the towing-path. An eight-oar lay under the +bank, and the men on shore were cheering and praising those in the boat for +having "bumped," which word I already understood to mean, winning a race. + +Among them, close to me, was the tall man who had upset me; and a very +handsome, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he +recognized me instantly, and spoke. + +"I hope I didn't hurt you much, Really, when I spoke so sharply, I did not +see that you were not a gownsman!" + +The speech, as I suppose now, was meant courteously enough. It indicated +that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class, he +was too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the +words, "not a gownsman." Why should he see that I was not a gownsman? +Because I was shabbier?--(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they +had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may +mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had +not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish, +of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled, +nevertheless, at not being mistaken for one; and answered, sharply enough-- + +"No matter whether I am hurt or not. It serves me right for getting among +you cursed aristocrats." + +"Box the cad's ears, Lord Lynedale," said a dirty fellow with a long +pole--a cad himself, I should have thought. + +"Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry," said another. + +The lord (for so I understood he was) looked at me with an air of surprise +and amusement, which may have been good-natured enough in him, but did not +increase the good-nature in me. + +"Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you. +Here's half-a-crown to cover damages." + +"Better give it me than a muff like that," quoth he of the long pole; while +I answered, surlily enough, that I wanted neither him nor his money, and +burst through the crowd toward Cambridge. I was so shabby and plebeian, +then, that people actually dare offer me money! Intolerable! + +The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame +of mind. + +So I was. And so would he have been in my place. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE LOST IDOL FOUND. + + +On my return, I found my cousin already at home, in high spirits at having, +as he informed me, "bumped the first Trinity." I excused myself for my +dripping state, simply by saying that I had slipped into the river. To tell +him the whole of the story, while the fancied insult still rankled fresh in +me, was really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride. + +Then came the question, "What had brought me to Cambridge?" I told him all, +and he seemed honestly to sympathize with my misfortunes. + +"Never mind; we'll make it all right somehow. Those poems of yours--you +must let me have them and look over them; and I dare say I shall persuade +the governor to do something with them. After all, it's no loss for you; +you couldn't have got on tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for that;--you +ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. These sizarships, +now, were meant for--just such cases as yours--clever fellows who could not +afford to educate themselves; if we could only help you to one of them, +now-- + +"You forget that in that case," said I, with something like a sigh, "I +should have to become a member of the Church of England." + +"Why, no; not exactly. Though, of course, if you want to get all out of the +university which you ought to get, you must do so at last." + +"And pretend to believe what I do not; for the sake of deserting my own +class, and pandering to the very aristocrats, whom--" + +"Hullo!" and he jumped with a hoarse laugh. "Stop that till I see whether +the door is sported. Why, you silly fellow, what harm have the aristocrats, +as you call them, ever done you? Are they not doing you good at this +moment? Are you not, by virtue of their aristocratic institutions, nearer +having your poems published, your genius recognized, etc. etc., than ever +you were before?" + +"Aristocrats? Then you call yourself one?" + +"No, Alton, my boy; not yet," said he quietly and knowingly. "Not yet: but +I have chosen the right road, and shall end at the road's end; and I advise +you--for really, as my cousin, I wish you all success, even for the mere +credit of the family, to choose the same road likewise." + +"What road?" + +"Come up to Cambridge, by hook or by crook, and then take orders." + +I laughed scornfully. + +"My good cousin, it is the only method yet discovered for turning a snob +(as I am, or was) into a gentleman; except putting him into a heavy cavalry +regiment. My brother, who has no brains, preferred the latter method. I, +who flatter myself that I have some, have taken the former." The thought +was new and astonishing to me, and I looked at him in silence while he ran +on-- + +"If you are once a parson, all is safe. Be you who you may before, from +that moment you are a gentleman. No one will offer an insult. You are good +enough for any man's society. You can dine at any nobleman's table. You can +be friend, confidant, father confessor, if you like, to the highest women +in the land; and if you have person, manners, and common sense, marry one +of them into the bargain, Alton, my boy." + +"And it is for that that you will sell your soul--to become a hanger-on of +the upper classes, in sloth and luxury?" + +"Sloth and luxury? Stuff and nonsense! I tell you that after I have taken +orders, I shall have years and years of hard work before me; continual +drudgery of serving tables, managing charities, visiting, preaching, from +morning till night, and after that often from night to morning again. +Enough to wear out any but a tough constitution, as I trust mine is. Work, +Alton, and hard work, is the only way now-a-days to rise in the Church, as +in other professions. My father can buy me a living some day: but he +can't buy me success, notoriety, social position, power--" and he stopped +suddenly, as if he had been on the point of saying something more which +should not have been said. + +"And this," I said, "is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry? It +is for this, that you, brought up a dissenter, have gone over to the Church +of England?" + +"And how do you know"--and his whole tone of voice changed instantly +into what was meant, I suppose, for a gentle seriousness and reverent +suavity--"that I am not a sincere member of the Church of England? How do +you know that I may not have loftier plans and ideas, though I may not +choose to parade them to everyone, and give that which is holy to the +dogs?" + +"I am the dog, then?" I asked, half amused, for I was too curious about his +state of mind to be angry. + +"Not at all, my dear fellow. But those great men to whom we (or at least I) +owe our conversion to the true Church, always tell us (and you will feel +yourself how right they are) not to parade religious feelings; to look upon +them as sacred things, to be treated with that due reserve which springs +from real reverence. You know, as well as I, whether that is the fashion +of the body in which we were, alas! brought up. You know, as well as I, +whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect +for sacred things." + +"I do, too well." And I thought of Mr. Wigginton and my mother's tea +parties. + +"I dare say the vulgarity of that school has, ere now, shaken your faith in +all that was holy?" + +I was very near confessing that it had: but a feeling came over me, I knew +not why, that my cousin would have been glad to get me into his power, and +would therefore have welcomed a confession of infidelity. So I held my +tongue. + +"I can confess," he said, in the most confidential tone, "that it had for a +time that effect on me. I have confessed it, ere now, and shall again and +again, I trust. But I shudder to think of what I might have been believing +or disbelieving now, if I had not in a happy hour fallen in with Mr. +Newman's sermons, and learnt from them, and from his disciples, what the +Church of England really was; not Protestant, no; but Catholic in the +deepest and highest sense." + +"So you are one of these new Tractarians? You do not seem to have adopted +yet the ascetic mode of life, which I hear they praise up so highly," + +"My dear Alton, if you have read, as you have, your Bible, you will +recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast. What I do +or do not do in the way of self-denial, unless I were actually profligate, +which I give you my sacred honour I am not, must be a matter between Heaven +and myself." + +There was no denying that truth; but the longer my cousin talked the less I +trusted in him--I had almost said, the less I believed him. Ever since the +tone of his voice had changed so suddenly, I liked him less than when he +was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition. I do not think +he was a hypocrite. I think he believed what he said, as strongly as he +could believe anything. He proved afterwards that he did so, as far as +man can judge man, by severe and diligent parish work: but I cannot help +doubting at times, if that man ever knew what believing meant. God forgive +him! In that, he is no worse than hundreds more who have never felt the +burning and shining flame of intense conviction, of some truth rooted in +the inmost recesses of the soul, by which a man must live, for which he +would not fear to die. + +And therefore I listened to him dully and carelessly; I did not care to +bring objections, which arose thick and fast, to everything he said. He +tried to assure me--and did so with a great deal of cleverness--that this +Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic, but a democratic one; +that the Catholic Church had been in all ages the Church of the poor; that +the clergy were commissioned by Heaven to vindicate the rights of the +people, and to stand between them and the tyranny of Mammon. I did not +care to answer him that the "Catholic Church" had always been a Church of +slaves, and not of free men; that the clergy had in every age been the +enemies of light, of liberty; the oppressors of their flocks; and that to +exalt a sacerdotal caste over other aristocracies, whether of birth or +wealth, was merely to change our tyrants. When he told me that a clergyman +of the Established Church, if he took up the cause of the working classes, +might be the boldest and surest of all allies, just because, being +established, and certain of his income, he cared not one sixpence what he +said to any man alive, I did not care to answer him, as I might--And more +shame upon the clergy that, having the safe vantage-ground which you +describe, they dare not use it like men in a good cause, and speak their +minds, if forsooth no one can stop them from so doing. In fact, I was +distrustful, which I had a right to be, and envious also; but if I had a +right to be that, I was certainly not wise, nor is any man, in exercising +the said dangerous right as I did, and envying my cousin and every man in +Cambridge. + +But that evening, understanding that a boating supper, or some jubilation +over my cousin's victory, was to take place in his rooms, I asked leave to +absent myself--and I do not think my cousin felt much regret at giving me +leave--and wandered up and down the King's Parade, watching the tall gables +of King's College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate House, and +the stately tower of St. Mary's, as they stood, stern and silent, bathed in +the still glory of the moonlight, and contrasting bitterly the lot of those +who were educated under their shadow to the lot which had befallen me. +[Footnote: It must be remembered that these impressions of, and comments on +the universities, are not my own. They are simply what clever working men +thought about them from 1845 to 1850; a period at which I had the fullest +opportunities for knowing the thoughts of working men.] + +"Noble buildings!" I said to myself, "and noble institutions! given freely +to the people, by those who loved the people, and the Saviour who died +for them. They gave us what they had, those mediaeval founders: whatsoever +narrowness of mind or superstition defiled their gift was not their fault, +but the fault of their whole age. The best they knew they imparted freely, +and God will reward them for it. To monopolize those institutions for the +rich, as is done now, is to violate both the spirit and the letter of +the foundations; to restrict their studies to the limits of middle-aged +Romanism, their conditions of admission to those fixed at the Reformation, +is but a shade less wrongful. The letter is kept--the spirit is thrown +away. You refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of England, +say, rather, any who will not sign the dogmas of the Church of England, +whether they believe a word of them or not. Useless formalism! which lets +through the reckless, the profligate, the ignorant, the hypocritical: +and only excludes the honest and the conscientious, and the mass of the +intellectual working men. And whose fault is it that THEY are not members +of the Church of England? Whose fault is it, I ask? Your predecessors +neglected the lower orders, till they have ceased to reverence either you +or your doctrines, you confess that, among yourselves, freely enough. You +throw the blame of the present wide-spread dislike to the Church of England +on her sins during 'the godless eighteenth century.' Be it so. Why are +those sins to be visited on us? Why are we to be shut out from the +universities, which were founded for us, because you have let us grow +up, by millions, heathens and infidels, as you call us? Take away your +subterfuge! It is not merely because we are bad churchmen that you exclude +us, else you would be crowding your colleges, now, with the talented poor +of the agricultural districts, who, as you say, remain faithful to the +church of their fathers. But are there six labourers' sons educating in +the universities at this moment! No! the real reason for our exclusion, +churchmen or not, is, because we are _poor_--because we cannot pay your +exorbitant fees, often, as in the case of bachelors of arts, exacted for +tuition which is never given, and residence which is not permitted--because +we could not support the extravagance which you not only permit, but +encourage--because by your own unblushing confession, it insures the +university 'the support of the aristocracy.'" + +"But, on religious points, at least, you must abide by the statutes of the +university." + +Strange argument, truly, to be urged literally by English Protestants in +possession of Roman Catholic bequests! If that be true in the letter, +as well as in the spirit, you should have given place long ago to the +Dominicans and the Franciscans. In the spirit it is true, and the Reformers +acted on it when they rightly converted the universities to the uses of the +new faith. They carried out the spirit of the founders' statutes by making +the universities as good as they could be, and letting them share in the +new light of the Elizabethan age. But was the sum of knowledge, human and +divine, perfected at the Reformation? Who gave the Reformers, or you, who +call yourselves their representatives, a right to say to the mind of man, +and to the teaching of God's Spirit, "Hitherto, and no farther"? Society +and mankind, the children of the Supreme, will not stop growing for your +dogmas--much less for your vested interests; and the righteous law of +mingled development and renovation, applied in the sixteenth century, must +be reapplied in the nineteenth; while the spirits of the founders, now +purged from the superstitions and ignorances of their age, shall smile from +heaven, and say, "So would we have had it, if we had lived in the great +nineteenth century, into which it has been your privilege to be born." + +But such thoughts soon passed away. The image which I had seen that +afternoon upon the river banks had awakened imperiously the frantic +longings of past years; and now it reascended its ancient throne, and +tyrannously drove forth every other object, to keep me alone with its own +tantalizing and torturing beauty. I did not think about her--No; I only +stupidly and steadfastly stared at her with my whole soul and imagination, +through that long sleepless night; and, in spite of the fatigue of my +journey, and the stiffness proceeding from my fall and wetting, I lay +tossing till the early sun poured into my bedroom window. Then I arose, +dressed myself, and went out to wander up and down the streets, gazing +at one splendid building after another, till I found the gates of King's +College open. I entered eagerly, through a porch which, to my untutored +taste, seemed gorgeous enough to form the entrance to a fairy palace, and +stood in the quadrangle, riveted to the spot by the magnificence of the +huge chapel on the right. + +If I had admired it the night before, I felt inclined to worship it this +morning, as I saw the lofty buttresses and spires, fretted with all their +gorgeous carving, and "storied windows richly dight," sleeping in the glare +of the newly-risen sun, and throwing their long shadows due westward down +the sloping lawn, and across the river which dimpled and gleamed below, +till it was lost among the towering masses of crisp elms and rose-garlanded +chestnuts in the rich gardens beyond. + +Was I delighted? Yes--and yet no. There is a painful feeling in seeing +anything magnificent which one cannot understand. And perhaps it was a +morbid sensitiveness, but the feeling was strong upon me that I was an +interloper there--out of harmony with the scene and the system which had +created it; that I might be an object of unpleasant curiosity, perhaps of +scorn (for I had not forgotten the nobleman at the boat-race), amid those +monuments of learned luxury. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was only from +the instinct which makes us seek for solitude under the pressure of intense +emotions, when we have neither language to express them to ourselves, nor +loved one in whose silent eyes we may read kindred feelings--a sympathy +which wants no words. Whatever the cause was, when a party of men, in their +caps and gowns, approached me down the dark avenue which led into the +country, I was glad to shrink for concealment behind the weeping-willow +at the foot of the bridge, and slink off unobserved to breakfast with my +cousin. + +We had just finished breakfast, my cousin was lighting his meerschaum, when +a tall figure passed the window, and the taller of the noblemen, whom I +had seen at the boat-race, entered the room with a packet of papers in his +hand. + +"Here, Locule mi! my pocket-book--or rather, to stretch a bad pun till +it bursts, my pocket-dictionary--I require the aid of your +benevolently-squandered talents for the correction of these proofs. I am, +as usual, both idle and busy this morning; so draw pen, and set to work for +me." + +"I am exceedingly sorry, my lord," answered George, in his most obsequious +tone, "but I must work this morning with all my might. Last night, +recollect, was given to triumph, Bacchus, and idleness." + +"Then find some one who will do them for me, my Ulysses polumechane, +polutrope, panurge." + +"I shall be most happy (with a half-frown and a wince) to play Panurge to +your lordship's Pantagruel, on board the new yacht." + +"Oh, I am perfect in that character, I suppose? And is she after all, like +Pantagruel's ship, to be loaded with hemp? Well, we must try two or three +milder cargoes first. But come, find me some starving genius--some graeculus +esuriens--" + +"Who will ascend to the heaven of your lordship's eloquence for the +bidding?" + +"Five shillings a sheet--there will be about two of them, I think, in the +pamphlet." + +"May I take the liberty of recommending my cousin here?" + +"Your cousin?" And he turned to me, who had been examining with a sad and +envious eye the contents of the bookshelves. Our eyes met, and first a +faint blush, and then a smile of recognition, passed over his magnificent +countenance. + +"I think I had--I am ashamed that I cannot say the pleasure, of meeting him +at the boat race yesterday." + +My cousin looked inquiringly and vexed at us both. The nobleman smiled. + +"Oh, the fault was mine, not his." + +"I cannot think," I answered, "that you have any reasons to remember with +shame your own kindness and courtesy. As for me," I went on bitterly, "I +suppose a poor journeyman tailor, who ventures to look on at the sports of +gentlemen, only deserves to be run over." + +"Sir," he said, looking at me with a severe and searching glance, "your +bitterness is pardonable--but not your sneer. You do not yourself think +what you say, and you ought to know that I think it still less than +yourself. If you intend your irony to be useful, you should keep it till +you can use it courageously against the true offenders." + +I looked up at him fiercely enough, but the placid smile which had returned +to his face disarmed me. + +"Your class," he went on, "blind yourselves and our class as much by +wholesale denunciations of us, as we, alas! who should know better, do by +wholesale denunciations of you. As you grow older, you will learn that +there are exceptions to every rule." + +"And yet the exception proves the rule." + +"Most painfully true, sir. But that argument is two-edged. For instance, +am I to consider it the exception or the rule, when I am told that you, a +journeyman tailor, are able to correct these proofs for me?" + +"Nearer the rule, I think, than you yet fancy." + +"You speak out boldly and well; but how can you judge what I may please to +fancy? At all events, I will make trial of you. There are the proofs. Bring +them to me by four o'clock this afternoon, and if they are well done, I +will pay you more than I should do to the average hack-writer, for you will +deserve more." + +I took the proofs; he turned to go, and by a side-look at George beckoned +him out of the room. I heard a whispering in the passage; and I do not deny +that my heart beat high with new hopes, as I caught unwillingly the words-- + +"Such a forehead!--such an eye!--such a contour of feature as that!--Locule +mi--that boy ought not to be mending trousers." + +My cousin returned, half laughing, half angry. + +"Alton, you fool, why did you let out that you were a snip?" + +"I am not ashamed of my trade." + +"I am, then. However, you've done with it now; and if you can't come the +gentleman, you may as well come the rising genius. The self-educated dodge +pays well just now; and after all, you've hooked his lordship--thank me for +that. But you'll never hold him, you impudent dog, if you pull so hard +on him"--He went on, putting his hands into his coat-tail pockets, and +sticking himself in front of the fire, like the Delphic Pythoness upon the +sacred tripod, in hopes, I suppose, of some oracular afflatus--"You will +never hold him, I say, if you pull so hard on him. You ought to 'My lord' +him for months yet, at least. You know, my good fellow, you must take every +possible care to pick up what good breeding you can, if I take the trouble +to put you in the way of good society, and tell you where my private +birds'-nests are, like the green schoolboy some poet or other talks of." + +"He is no lord of mine," I answered, "in any sense of the word, and +therefore I shall not call him so." + +"Upon my honour! here is a young gentleman who intends to rise in the +world, and then commences by trying to walk through the first post he +meets! Noodle! can't you do like me, and get out of the carts' way when +they come by? If you intend to go ahead, you must just dodge in and out +like a dog at a fair. 'She stoops to conquer' is my motto, and a precious +good one too." + +"I have no wish to conquer Lord Lynedale, and so I shall not stoop to him." + +"I have, then; and to very good purpose, too. I am his whetstone, for +polishing up that classical wit of his on, till he carries it into +Parliament to astonish the country squires. He fancies himself a second +Goethe, I hav'n't forgot his hitting at me, before a large supper party, +with a certain epigram of that old turkeycock's about the whale having his +unmentionable parasite--and the great man likewise. Whale, indeed! I bide +my time, Alton, my boy--I bide my time; and then let your grand aristocrat +look out! If he does not find the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout +holding harpoon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it's a pity, +Alton my boy!" + +And he burst into a coarse laugh, tossed himself down on the sofa, and +re-lighted his meerschaum. + +"He seemed to me," I answered, "to have a peculiar courtesy and liberality +of mind towards those below him in rank." + +"Oh! he had, had he? Now, I'll just put you up to a dodge. He intends to +come the Mirabeau--fancies his mantle has fallen on him--prays before the +fellow's bust, I believe, if one knew the truth, for a double portion of +his spirit; and therefore it is a part of his game to ingratiate himself +with all pot-boy-dom, while at heart he is as proud, exclusive an +aristocrat, as ever wore nobleman's hat. At all events, you may get +something out of him, if you play your cards well--or, rather, help me +to play mine; for I consider him as my property, and you only as my +aide-de-camp." + +"I shall play no one's cards," I answered, sulkily. "I am doing work +fairly, and shall be fairly paid for it, and keep my own independence." + +"Independence--hey-day! Have you forgotten that, after all, you are +my--guest, to call it by the mildest term?" + +"Do you upbraid me with that?" I said, starting up. "Do you expect me to +live on your charity, on condition of doing your dirty work? You do not +know me, sir. I leave your roof this instant!" + +"You do not!" answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang over the sofa, and +set his back against the door. "Come, come, you Will-o'-the-Wisp, as full +of flights, and fancies, and vagaries, as a sick old maid! can't you see +which side your bread is buttered? Sit down, I say! Don't you know that I'm +as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do parade a little Gil +Bias morality now and then, just for fun's sake? Do you think I should be +so open with it, if I meant anything very diabolic? There--sit down, and +don't go into King Cambyses' vein, or Queen Hecuba's tears either, which +you seem inclined to do." + +"I know you have been very generous to me," I said, penitently; "but a +kindness becomes none when you are upbraided with it." + +"So say the copybooks--I deny it. At all events, I'll say no more; and +you shall sit down there, and write as still as a mouse till two, while +I tackle this never-to-be-enough-by-unhappy-third-years'-men-execrated +Griffin's Optics." + + * * * * * + +At four that afternoon, I knocked, proofs in hand, at the door of Lord +Lynedale's rooms in the King's Parade. The door was opened by a little +elderly groom, grey-coated, grey-gaitered, grey-haired, grey-visaged. He +had the look of a respectable old family retainer, and his exquisitely +neat groom's dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes. Class costumes, +relics though they are of feudalism, carry a charm with them. They are +symbolic, definitive; they bestow a personality on the wearer, which +satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly to classify him, to connect +him with a thousand stories and associations; and to my young mind, the +wiry, shrewd, honest, grim old serving-man seemed the incarnation of all +the wonders of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase, +of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt, in the +newspapers. He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised +me;--without insolence to me, or servility to his master; both of which I +had been taught to expect. + +Lord Lynedale bade me very courteously sit down while he examined the +proofs. I looked round the low-wainscoted apartment, with its narrow +mullioned windows, in extreme curiosity. What a real nobleman's abode could +be like, was naturally worth examining, to one who had, all his life, heard +of the aristocracy as of some mythic Titans--whether fiends or gods, being +yet a doubtful point--altogether enshrined on "cloudy Olympus," invisible +to mortal ken. The shelves were gay with morocco, Russia leather, and +gilding--not much used, as I thought, till my eye caught one of the +gorgeously-bound volumes lying on the table in a loose cover of polished +leather--a refinement of which poor I should never have dreamt. The walls +were covered with prints, which soon turned my eyes from everything else, +to range delighted over Landseers, Turners, Roberts's Eastern sketches, +the ancient Italian masters; and I recognized, with a sort of friendly +affection, an old print of my favourite St. Sebastian, in the Dulwich +Gallery. It brought back to my mind a thousand dreams, and a thousand +sorrows. Would those dreams be ever realized? Might this new acquaintance +possibly open some pathway towards their fulfilment?--some vista towards +the attainment of a station where they would, at least, be less chimerical? +And at that thought, my heart beat loud with hope. The room was choked up +with chairs and tables, of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical +uses. The floor was strewed with skins of bear, deer, and seal. In a corner +lay hunting-whips, and fishing-rods, foils, boxing-gloves, and gun-cases; +while over the chimney-piece, an array of rich Turkish pipes, all amber and +enamel, contrasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers--bronze +classic casts, upon Gothic oak brackets, and fantastic scraps of +continental carving. On the centre table, too, reigned the same rich +profusion, or if you will, confusion--MSS., "Notes in Egypt," "Goethe's +Walverwandschaften," Murray's Hand-books, and "Plato's Republic." What +was there not there? And I chuckled inwardly, to see how _Bell's Life in +London_ and the _Ecclesiologist_ had, between them, got down "McCulloch +on Taxation," and were sitting, arm-in-arm, triumphantly astride of him. +Everything in the room, even to the fragrant flowers in a German glass, +spoke of a travelled and cultivated luxury--manifold tastes and powers of +self-enjoyment and self-improvement, which, Heaven forgive me if I envied, +as I looked upon them. If I, now, had had one-twentieth part of those +books, prints, that experience of life, not to mention that physical +strength and beauty, which stood towering there before the fire--so simple; +so utterly unconscious of the innate nobleness and grace which shone out +from every motion of those stately limbs and features--all the delicacy +which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see, with the broad +strength of the proletarian--so different from poor me!--and so different, +too, as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure, from the miserable, +stunted specimens of over-bred imbecility whom I had often passed in +London! A strange question that of birth! and one in which the philosopher, +in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclusions. For, after +all, the physical and intellectual superiority of the high-born is only +preserved, as it was in the old Norman times, by the continual practical +abnegation of the very caste-lie on which they pride themselves--by +continual renovation of their race, by intermarriage with the ranks below +them. The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William; true--and so +did the tanner's of Falaise! + +At last he looked up and spoke courteously-- + +"I'm afraid I have kept you long; but now, here is for your corrections, +which are capital. I have really to thank you for a lesson in writing +English." And he put a sovereign into my hand. + +"I am very sorry," said I, "but I have no change." + +"Never mind that. Your work is well worth the money." + +"But," I said, "you agreed with me for five shillings a sheet, and--I do +not wish to be rude, but I cannot accept your kindness. We working men make +a rule of abiding by our wages, and taking nothing which looks like--" + +"Well, well--and a very good rule it is. I suppose, then, I must find out +some way for you to earn more. Good afternoon." And he motioned me out +of the room, followed me down stairs, and turned off towards the College +Gardens. + +I wandered up and down, feeding my greedy eyes, till I found myself again +upon the bridge where I had stood that morning, gazing with admiration +and astonishment at a scene which I have often expected to see painted or +described, and which, nevertheless, in spite of its unique magnificence, +seems strangely overlooked by those who cater for the public taste, with +pen and pencil. The vista of bridges, one after another spanning the +stream; the long line of great monastic palaces, all unlike, and yet all in +harmony, sloping down to the stream, with their trim lawns and ivied walls, +their towers and buttresses; and opposite them, the range of rich gardens +and noble timber-trees, dimly seen through which, at the end of the +gorgeous river avenue, towered the lofty buildings of St. John's. The whole +scene, under the glow of a rich May afternoon, seemed to me a fragment +out of the "Arabian Nights" or Spencer's "Fairy Queen." I leaned upon the +parapet, and gazed, and gazed, so absorbed in wonder and enjoyment, that I +was quite unconscious, for some time, that Lord Lynedale was standing by my +side, engaged in the same employment. He was not alone. Hanging on his arm +was a lady, whose face, it seemed to me, I ought to know. It certainly was +one not to be easily forgotten. She was beautiful, but with the face and +figure rather of a Juno than a Venus--dark, imperious, restless--the lips +almost too firmly set, the brow almost too massive and projecting--a queen, +rather to be feared than loved--but a queen still, as truly royal as the +man into whose face she was looking up with eager admiration and delight, +as he pointed out to her eloquently the several beauties of the landscape. +Her dress was as plain as that of any Quaker; but the grace of its +arrangement, of every line and fold, was enough, without the help of the +heavy gold bracelet on her wrist, to proclaim her a fine lady; by which +term, I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and +manner, down to every gesture, which Heaven forbid that I, professing to be +a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful; and therefore I welcome it, in +the name of the Author of all beauty. I value it so highly, that I would +fain see it extend, not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, +but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the labourer's hovel, and the +needlewoman's garret. + +Half in bashfulness, half in the pride which shrinks from anything like +intrusion, I was moving away; but the nobleman, recognising me with a smile +and a nod, made some observation on the beauty of the scene before us. +Before I could answer, however, I saw that his companion's eyes were fixed +intently on my face. + +"Is this," she said to Lord Lynedale, "the young person of whom you were +speaking to me just now? I fancy that I recollect him, though, I dare say, +he has forgotten me." + +If I had forgotten the face, that voice, so peculiarly rich, deep, and +marked in its pronunciation of every syllable, recalled her instantly to my +mind. It was the dark lady of the Dulwich Gallery! + +"I met you, I think," I said, "at the picture gallery at Dulwich, and you +were kind enough, and--and some persons who were with you, to talk to me +about a picture there." + +"Yes; Guido's St. Sebastian. You seemed fond of reading then. I am glad to +see you at college." + +I explained that I was not at college. That led to fresh gentle questions +on her part, till I had given her all the leading points of my history. +There was nothing in it of which I ought to have been ashamed. + +She seemed to become more and more interested in my story, and her +companion also. + +"And have you tried to write? I recollect my uncle advising you to try a +poem on St. Sebastian. It was spoken, perhaps, in jest; but it will not, I +hope, have been labour lost, if you have taken it in earnest." + +"Yes--I have written on that and on other subjects, during the last few +years." + +"Then, you must let us see them, if you have them with you. I think my +uncle, Arthur, might like to look over them; and if they were fit for +publication, he might be able to do something towards it." + +"At all events," said Lord Lynedale, "a self-educated author is always +interesting. Bring any of your poems, that you have with you, to the Eagle +this afternoon, and leave them there for Dean Winnstay; and to-morrow +morning, if you have nothing better to do, call there between ten and +eleven o'clock." + +He wrote me down the dean's address, and nodding a civil good morning, +turned away with his queenly companion, while I stood gazing after him, +wondering whether all noblemen and high-born ladies were like them in +person and in spirit--a question which, in spite of many noble exceptions, +some of them well known and appreciated by the working men, I am afraid +must be answered in the negative. + +I took my MSS. to the Eagle, and wandered out once more, instinctively, +among those same magnificent trees at the back of the colleges, to enjoy +the pleasing torment of expectation. "My uncle!" was he the same old man +whom I had seen at the gallery; and if so, was Lillian with him? Delicious +hope! And yet, what if she was with him--what to me? But yet I sat silent, +dreaming, all the evening, and hurried early to bed--not to sleep, but to +lie and dream on and on, and rise almost before light, eat no breakfast, +and pace up and down, waiting impatiently for the hour at which I was to +find out whether my dream, was true. + +And it was true! The first object I saw, when I entered the room, was +Lillian, looking more beautiful than ever. The child of sixteen had +blossomed into the woman of twenty. The ivory and vermilion of the +complexion had toned down together into still richer hues. The dark hazel +eyes shone with a more liquid lustre. The figure had become more rounded, +without losing a line of that fairy lightness, with which her light +morning-dress, with its delicate French semi-tones of colour, gay and +yet not gaudy, seemed to harmonize. The little plump jewelled hands--the +transparent chestnut hair, banded round the beautiful oval masque--the tiny +feet, which, as Suckling has it, + + Underneath her petticoat + Like little mice peeped in and out-- + +I could have fallen down, fool that I was! and worshipped--what? I could +not tell then, for I cannot tell even now. + +The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers, +meditatively, on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, choking--my eyes +devouring my idol--forgetting why I had come--seeing nothing but +her--listening for nothing but the opening of these lips. I believe the +dean was some sentences deep in his oration, before I became conscious +thereof. + +"--And I think I may tell you, at once, that I have been very much +surprised and gratified with them. They evince, on the whole, a far +greater acquaintance with the English classic-models, and with the laws of +rhyme and melody, than could have been expected from a young man of your +class--_macte virtute puer_. Have you read any Latin?" + +"A little." And I went on staring at Lillian, who looked up, furtively, +from her work, every now and then, to steal a glance at me, and set my poor +heart thumping still more fiercely against my side. + +"Very good; you will have the less trouble, then, in the preparation +for college. You will find out for yourself, of course, the immense +disadvantages of self-education. The fact is, my dear lord" (turning to +Lord Lynedale), "it is only useful as an indication of a capability of +being educated by others. One never opens a book written by working men, +without shuddering at a hundred faults of style. However, there are some +very tolerable attempts among these--especially the imitations of Milton's +'Comus.'" + +Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations; but such, no doubt, +they were. + +"I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence on your writing. +He is a guide as irregular in taste, as unorthodox in doctrine; though +there are some pretty things in him now and then. And you have caught his +melody tolerably here, now--" + +"Oh, that is such a sweet thing!" said Lillian. "Do you know, I read it +over and over last night, and took it up-stairs with me. How very fond +of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so +passionately the longing after them." + +That voice once more! It intoxicated me, so that I hardly knew what I +stammered out--something about working men having very few opportunities +of indulging the taste for--I forget what. I believe I was on the point +of running off into some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady's +warning eye on me. + +"Ah, yes! I forgot. I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little +opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an +unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college +and make him a clergyman!" + +Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that +very "_he_" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a +man--an equal; but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over, and +examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and +undeserved benevolence. + +"Gently, gently, fair lady! We must not be as headlong as some people would +kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise +into a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in +that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training +college; St. Mark's, I should say, on the whole, might, by its strong +Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of +_sansculottism_. You understand me, my lord? And, then, if he distinguished +himself there, it would be time to think of getting him a sizarship." + +"Poor Pegasus in harness!" half smiled, half sighed, the dark lady. + +"Just the sort of youth," whispered Lord Lynedale, loud enough for me to +hear, "to take out with us to the Mediterranean as secretary--s'il y avait +la de la morale, of course--" + +Yes--and of course, too, the tailor's boy was not expected to understand +French. But the most absurd thing was, how everybody, except perhaps the +dark lady, seemed to take for granted that I felt myself exceedingly +honoured, and must consider it, as a matter of course, the greatest +possible stretch of kindness thus to talk me over, and settle everything +for me, as if I was not a living soul, but a plant in a pot. Perhaps they +were not unsupported by experience. I suppose too many of us would have +thought it so; there are flunkeys in all ranks, and to spare. Perhaps the +true absurdity was the way in which I sat, demented, inarticulate, staring +at Lillian, and only caring for any word which seemed to augur a chance of +seeing her again; instead of saying, as I felt, that I had no wish whatever +to rise above my station; no intention whatever of being sent to training +schools or colleges, or anywhere else at the expense of other people. And +therefore it was that I submitted blindly, when the dean, who looked as +kind, and was really, I believe, as kind as ever was human being, turned to +me with a solemn authoritative voice-- + +"Well, my young friend, I must say that I am, on the whole, very much +pleased with your performance. It corroborates, my dear lord, the +assertion, for which I have been so often ridiculed, that there are many +real men, capable of higher things, scattered up and down among the masses. +Attend to me, sir!" (a hint which I suspect I very much wanted). "Now, +recollect; if it should be hereafter in our power to assist your prospects +in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the +higher classes, which I am sorry to see in your MSS. As you know more of +the world, you will find that the poor are not by any means as ill used as +they are taught, in these days, to believe. The rich have their sorrows +too--no one knows it better than I"--(and he played pensively with his gold +pencil-case)--"and good and evil are pretty equally distributed among all +ranks, by a just and merciful God. I advise you most earnestly, as you +value your future success in life, to give up reading those unprincipled +authors, whose aim is to excite the evil passions of the multitude; and +to shut your ears betimes to the extravagant calumnies of demagogues, who +make tools of enthusiastic and imaginative minds for their own selfish +aggrandisement. Avoid politics; the workman has no more to do with them +than the clergyman. We are told, on divine authority, to fear God and the +king, and meddle not with those who are given to change. Rather put before +yourself the example of such a man as the excellent Dr. Brown, one of the +richest and most respected men of the university, with whom I hope to have +the pleasure of dining this evening--and yet that man actually, for several +years of his life, worked at a carpenter's bench!" + +I too had something to say about all that. I too knew something about +demagogues and working men: but the sight of Lillian made me a coward; and +I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half +painful, by its contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter's +bench, and fulfilled his mission--not by an old age of wealth, +respectability, and port wine; but on the Cross of Calvary. After all, the +worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer. + +"Next--I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get his opinion as +to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that I wish you to build +much on the chance. It is not necessary that you should be a poet. I should +prefer mathematics for you, as a methodic discipline of the intellect. +Most active minds write poetry, at a certain age--I wrote a good deal, I +recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing. This haste to rush +into print is one of the bad signs of the times--a symptom of the unhealthy +activity which was first called out by the French revolution. In the +Elizabethan age, every decently-educated gentleman was able, as a matter of +course, to indite a sonnet to his mistress's eye-brow, or an epigram on his +enemy; and yet he never dreamt of printing them. One of the few rational +things I have met with, Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable +pet Mr. Carlyle--though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed +me to read much--is the remark that 'speech is silver'--'silvern' he calls +it, pedantically--'while silence is golden.'" + +At this point of the sermon, Lillian fled from the room, to my extreme +disgust. But still the old man prosed-- + +"I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next +week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising +young man; and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the +end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more +of you at my house at D * * * *, about * * * * miles from this place. Good +morning." + +I went, in rapture at the last announcement--and yet my conscience smote +me. I had not stood up for the working men. I had heard them calumniated, +and held my tongue--but I was to see Lillian. I had let the dean fancy I +was willing to become a pensioner on his bounty--that I was a member of +the Church of England, and willing to go to a Church Training School--but +I was to see Lillian. I had lowered myself in my own eyes--but I had seen +Lillian. Perhaps I exaggerated my own offences: however that may be, love +soon, silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin's rooms on my +return. + + * * * * * + +That week passed rapidly and happily. I was half amused with the change in +my cousin's demeanour. I had evidently risen immensely in his eyes; and I +could not help applying, in my heart, to him, Mr. Carlyle's dictum about +the valet species--how they never honour the unaccredited hero, having +no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and +accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god, Public Opinion. +I saw through the motive of his new-fledged respect for me--and yet +encouraged it; for it flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me. It +was something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appreciated at +last, even outwardly. And besides, this sad respect took a form which was +very tempting to me now--though the week before it was just the one which +I should have repelled with scorn. George became very anxious to lend me +money, to order me clothes at his own tailor's, and set me up in various +little toilette refinements, that I might make a respectable appearance +at the dean's. I knew that he consulted rather the honour of the family, +than my good; but I did not know that his aim was also to get me into his +power; and I refused more and more weakly at each fresh offer, and at last +consented, in an evil hour, to sell my own independence, for the sake of +indulging my love-dream, and appearing to be what I was not. + +I saw little of the University men; less than I might have done; less, +perhaps, than I ought to have done. My cousin did not try to keep me from +them; they, whenever I met them, did not shrink from me, and were civil +enough: but I shrank from them. My cousin attributed my reserve to modesty, +and praised me for it in his coarse fashion: but he was mistaken. Pride, +rather, and something very like envy, kept me silent. Always afraid (at +that period of my career) of young men of my own age, I was doubly afraid +of these men; not because they were cleverer than I, for they were not, but +because I fancied I had no fair chance with them; they had opportunities +which I had not, read and talked of books of which I knew nothing; and when +they did touch on matters which I fancied I understood, it was from a point +of view so different from mine, that I had to choose, as I thought, between +standing up alone to be baited by the whole party, or shielding myself +behind a proud and somewhat contemptuous silence. I looked on them as +ignorant aristocrats; while they looked on me, I verily believe now, as a +very good sort of fellow, who ought to talk well, but would not; and went +their way carelessly. The truth is, I did envy those men. I did not envy +them their learning; for the majority of men who came into my cousin's room +had no learning to envy, being rather brilliant and agreeable men than +severe students; but I envied them their opportunities of learning; and +envied them just as much their opportunities of play--their boating, their +cricket, their foot-ball, their riding, and their gay confident carriage, +which proceeds from physical health and strength, and which I mistook for +the swagger of insolence; while Parker's Piece, with its games, was a sight +which made me grind my teeth, when I thought of the very different chance +of physical exercise which falls to the lot of a London artisan. + +And still more did I envy them when I found that many of them combined, as +my cousin did, this physical exercise with really hard mental work, and +found the one help the other. It was bitter to me--whether it ought to have +been so or not--to hear of prizemen, wranglers, fellows of colleges, as +first rate oars, boxers, foot-ball players; and my eyes once fairly filled +with tears, when, after the departure of a little fellow no bigger or +heavier than myself, but with the eye and the gait of a game-cock, I was +informed that he was "bow-oar in the University eight, and as sure to be +senior classic next year as he has a head on his shoulders." And I thought +of my nights of study in the lean-to garret, and of the tailor's workshop, +and of Sandy's den, and said to myself bitter words, which I shall not +set down. Let gentlemen readers imagine them for themselves; and judge +rationally and charitably of an unhealthy working-man like me, if +his tongue be betrayed, at moments, to envy, hatred, malice, and all +uncharitableness. + +However, one happiness I had--books. I read in my cousin's room from +morning till night. He gave me my meals hospitably enough: but disappeared +every day about four to "hall"; after which he did not reappear till eight, +the interval being taken up, he said, in "wines" and an hour of billiards. +Then he sat down to work, and read steadily and well till twelve, while +I, nothing loth, did the same; and so passed, rapidly enough, my week at +Cambridge. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +A CATHEDRAL TOWN. + + +At length, the wished-for day had arrived; and, with my cousin, I was +whirling along, full of hope and desire, towards the cathedral town of +D * * * *--through a flat fen country, which though I had often heard it +described as ugly, struck my imagination much. The vast height and width +of the sky-arch, as seen from those flats as from an ocean--the grey haze +shrouding the horizon of our narrow land-view, and closing us in, till +we seemed to be floating through infinite space, on a little platform of +earth; the rich poplar-fringed farms, with their herds of dappled oxen--the +luxuriant crops of oats and beans--the tender green of the tall-rape, a +plant till then unknown to me--the long, straight, silver dykes, with their +gaudy carpets of strange floating water-plants, and their black banks, +studded with the remains of buried forests--the innumerable draining-mills, +with their creaking sails and groaning wheels--the endless rows of pollard +willows, through which the breeze moaned and rung, as through the strings +of some vast AEolian harp; the little island knolls in that vast sea of +fen, each with its long village street, and delicately taper spire; all +this seemed to me to contain an element of new and peculiar beauty. + +"Why!" exclaims the reading public, if perchance it ever sees this tale of +mine, in its usual prurient longing after anything like personal gossip, or +scandalous anecdote--"why, there is no cathedral town which begins with a +D! Through the fen, too! He must mean either Ely, Lincoln, or Peterborough; +that's certain." Then, at one of those places, they find there is dean--not +of the name of Winnstay, true--"but his name begins with a W; and he has +a pretty daughter--no, a niece; well, that's very near it;--it must be +him. No; at another place--there is not a dean, true--but a canon, or an +archdeacon-something of that kind; and he has a pretty daughter, really; +and his name begins--not with W, but with Y; well, that's the last letter +of Winnstay, if it is not the first: that must be the poor man! What a +shame to have exposed his family secrets in that way!" And then a whole +circle of myths grow up round the man's story. It is credibly ascertained +that I am the man who broke into his house last year, after having made +love to his housemaid, and stole his writing-desk and plate--else, why +should a burglar steal family-letters, if he had not some interest in +them?... And before the matter dies away, some worthy old gentleman, who +has not spoken to a working man since he left his living, thirty years ago, +and hates a radical as he does the Pope, receives two or three anonymous +letters, condoling with him on the cruel betrayal of his confidence--base +ingratitude for undeserved condescension, &c., &c.; and, perhaps, with an +enclosure of good advice for his lovely daughter. + +But wherever D * * * * is, we arrived there; and with a beating heart, +I--and I now suspect my cousin also--walked up the sunny slopes, where +the old convent had stood, now covered with walled gardens and noble +timber-trees, and crowned by the richly fretted towers of the cathedral, +which we had seen, for the last twenty miles, growing gradually larger and +more distinct across the level flat. "Ely?" "No; Lincoln!" "Oh! but really, +it's just as much like Peterborough!" Never mind, my dear reader; the +essence of the fact, as I think, lies not quite so much in the name of the +place, as in what was done there--to which I, with all the little respect +which I can muster, entreat your attention. + +It is not from false shame at my necessary ignorance, but from a fear lest +I should bore my readers with what seems to them trivial, that I refrain +from dilating on many a thing which struck me as curious in this my first +visit to the house of an English gentleman. I must say, however, though +I suppose that it will be numbered, at least, among trite remarks, if +not among trivial ones, that the wealth around me certainly struck me, +as it has others, as not very much in keeping with the office of one who +professed to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. But I salved +over that feeling, being desirous to see everything in the brightest light, +with the recollection that the dean had a private fortune of his own; +though it did seem at moments, that if a man has solemnly sworn to devote +himself, body and soul, to the cause of the spiritual welfare of the +nation, that vow might be not unfairly construed to include his money as +well as his talents, time, and health: unless, perhaps, money is considered +by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to be +given to God--a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and +universally respected archbishop, living within a quarter of a mile of one +of the worst _infernos_ of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy--can +yet find it in his heart to save L120,000 out of church revenues, and +leave it to his family; though it will not explain how Irish bishops can +reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, +large fortunes--for I suppose from fifty to a hundred thousand pounds +is something--saved from fees and tithes, taken from the pockets of a +Roman Catholic population, whom they have been put there to convert to +Protestantism for the last three hundred years--with what success, all the +world knows. Of course, it is a most impertinent, and almost a blasphemous +thing, for a working man to dare to mention such subjects. Is it not +"speaking evil of dignities"? Strange, by-the-by, that merely to mention +facts, without note or comment, should be always called "speaking evil"! +Does not that argue ill for the facts themselves? Working men think so; but +what matter what "the swinish multitude" think? + +When I speak of wealth, I do not mean that the dean's household would +have been considered by his own class at all too luxurious. He would have +been said, I suppose, to live in a "quiet, comfortable, gentlemanlike +way"--"everything very plain and very good." It included a butler--a +quiet, good-natured old man--who ushered us into our bedrooms; a footman, +who opened the door--a sort of animal for which I have an extreme +aversion--young, silly, conceited, over-fed, florid--who looked just the +man to sell his soul for a livery, twice as much food as he needed, and the +opportunity of unlimited flirtations with the maids; and a coachman, very +like other coachmen, whom I saw taking a pair of handsome carriage-horses +out to exercise, as we opened the gate. + +The old man, silently and as a matter of course, unpacked for me my +little portmanteau (lent me by my cousin), and placed my things neatly in +various drawers--went down, brought up a jug of hot water, put it on the +washing-table--told me that dinner was at six--that the half-hour bell +rang at half-past five--and that, if I wanted anything, the footman would +answer the bell (bells seeming a prominent idea in his theory of the +universe)--and so left me, wondering at the strange fact that free men, +with free wills, do sell themselves, by the hundred thousand, to perform +menial offices for other men, not for love, but for money; becoming, to +define them strictly, bell-answering animals; and are honest, happy, +contented, in such a life. A man-servant, a soldier, and a Jesuit, are to +me the three great wonders of humanity--three forms of moral suicide, for +which I never had the slightest gleam of sympathy, or even comprehension. + + * * * * * + +At last we went down to dinner, after my personal adornments had been +carefully superintended by my cousin, who gave me, over and above, various +warnings and exhortations as to my behaviour; which, of course, took due +effect, in making me as nervous, constrained, and affected, as possible. +When I appeared in the drawing-room, I was kindly welcomed by the dean, the +two ladies, and Lord Lynedale. + +But, as I stood fidgeting and blushing, sticking my arms and legs, and head +into all sorts of quaint positions--trying one attitude, and thinking it +looked awkward, and so exchanged it for another, more awkward still--my eye +fell suddenly on a slip of paper, which had conveyed itself, I never knew +how, upon the pages of the Illustrated Book of Ballads, which I was turning +over:-- + +"Be natural, and you will be gentlemanlike. If you wish others to forget +your rank, do not forget it yourself. If you wish others to remember you +with pleasure, forget yourself; and be just what God has made you." + +I could not help fancying that the lesson, whether intentionally or not, +was meant for me; and a passing impulse made me take up the slip, fold it +together, and put it into my bosom. Perhaps it was Lillian's handwriting! I +looked round at the ladies; but their faces were each buried behind a book. + +We went in to dinner; and, to my delight, I sat next to my goddess, while +opposite me was my cousin. Luckily, I had got some directions from him as +to what to say and do, when my wonders, the servants, thrust eatables and +drinkables over nay shoulders. + +Lillian and my cousin chatted away about church-architecture, and the +restorations which were going on at the cathedral; while I, for the first +half of dinner, feasted my eyes with the sight of a beauty, in which I +seemed to discover every moment some new excellence. Every time I looked +up at her, my eyes dazzled, my face burnt, my heart sank, and soft thrills +ran through every nerve. And yet, Heaven knows, my emotions were as pure as +those of an infant. It was beauty, longed for, and found at last, which I +adored as a thing not to be possessed, but worshipped. The desire, even the +thought, of calling her my own, never crossed my mind. I felt that I could +gladly die, if by death I could purchase the permission to watch her. I +understood, then, and for ever after, the pure devotion of the old knights +and troubadours of chivalry. I seemed to myself to be their brother--one +of the holy guild of poet-lovers. I was a new Petrarch, basking in the +light-rays of a new Laura. I gazed, and gazed, and found new life in +gazing, and was content. + +But my simple bliss was perfected, when she suddenly turned to me, and +began asking me questions on the very points on which I was best able to +answer. She talked about poetry, Tennyson and Wordsworth; asked me if I +understood Browning's Sordello; and then comforted me, after my stammering +confession that I did not, by telling me she was delighted to hear that; +for she did not understand it either, and it was so pleasant to have a +companion in ignorance. Then she asked me, if I was much struck with the +buildings in Cambridge?--had they inspired me with any verses yet?--I was +bound to write something about them--and so on; making the most commonplace +remarks look brilliant, from the ease and liveliness with which they were +spoken, and the tact with which they were made pleasant to the listener: +while I wondered at myself, for enjoying from her lips the flippant, +sparkling tattle, which had hitherto made young women to me objects of +unspeakable dread, to be escaped by crossing the street, hiding behind +doors, and rushing blindly into back-yards and coal-holes. + +The ladies left the room; and I, with Lillian's face glowing bright in my +imagination, as the crimson orb remains on the retina of the closed eye, +after looking intently at the sun, sat listening to a pleasant discussion +between the dean and the nobleman, about some country in the East, which +they had both visited, and greedily devouring all the new facts which, they +incidentally brought forth out of the treasures of their highly cultivated +minds. + +I was agreeably surprised (don't laugh, reader) to find that I was allowed +to drink water; and that the other men drank not more than a glass or two +of wine, after the ladies had retired. I had, somehow, got both lords and +deans associated in my mind with infinite swillings of port wine, and +bacchanalian orgies, and sat down at first, in much fear and trembling, +lest I should be compelled to join, under penalties of salt-and-water; but +I had made up my mind, stoutly, to bear anything rather than get drunk; +and so I had all the merit of a temperance-martyr, without any of its +disagreeables. + +"Well" said I to myself, smiling in spirit, "what would my Chartist +friends say if they saw me here? Not even Crossthwaite himself could +find a flaw in the appreciation of merit for its own sake, the courtesy +and condescension--ah! but he would complain of it, simply for being +condescension." But, after all, what else could it be? Were not these men +more experienced, more learned, older than myself? They were my superiors; +it was in vain for me to attempt to hide it from myself. But the wonder +was, that they themselves were the ones to appear utterly unconscious of +it. They treated me as an equal; they welcomed me--the young viscount and +the learned dean--on the broad ground of a common humanity; as I believe +hundreds more of their class would do, if we did not ourselves take a pride +in estranging them from us--telling them that fraternization between our +classes is impossible, and then cursing them for not fraternizing with us. +But of that, more hereafter. + +At all events, now my bliss was perfect. No! I was wrong--a higher +enjoyment than all awaited me, when, going into the drawing-room, I found +Lillian singing at the piano. I had no idea that music was capable of +expressing and conveying emotions so intense and ennobling. My experience +was confined to street music, and to the bawling at the chapel. And, as +yet, Mr. Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that of +kings, and given to every workman a free entrance into the magic world of +harmony and melody, where he may prove his brotherhood with Mozart and +Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Great unconscious demagogue!--leader of +the people, and labourer in the cause of divine equality!--thy reward is +with the Father of the people! + +The luscious softness of the Italian airs overcame me with a delicious +enervation. Every note, every interval, each shade of expression spoke to +me--I knew not what: and yet they spoke to my heart of hearts. A spirit +out of the infinite heaven seemed calling to my spirit, which longed to +answer--and was dumb--and could only vent itself in tears, which welled +unconsciously forth, and eased my heart from the painful tension of +excitement. + + * * * * * + Her voice is hovering o'er my soul--it lingers, + O'ershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings; + The blood and life within those snowy fingers + Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. + My brain is wild, my breath comes quick. + The blood is listening in my frame; + And thronging shadows, fast and thick, + Fall on my overflowing eyes. + My heart is quivering like a flame; + As morning-dew that in the sunbeam dies, + I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies. + * * * * * + +The dark lady, Miss Staunton, as I ought to call her, saw my emotion, and, +as I thought unkindly, checked the cause of it at once. + +"Pray do not give us any more of those die-away Italian airs, Lillian. Sing +something manful, German or English, or anything you like, except those +sentimental wailings." + +Lillian stopped, took another book, and commenced, after a short prelude, +one of my own songs. Surprise and pleasure overpowered me more utterly than +the soft southern melodies had done. I was on the point of springing up and +leaving the room, when my raptures were checked by our host, who turned +round, and stopped short in an oration on the geology of Upper Egypt. + +"What's that about brotherhood and freedom, Lillian? We don't want anything +of that kind here." + +"It's only a popular London song, papa," answered she, with an arch smile. + +"Or likely to become so," added Miss Staunton, in her marked dogmatic tone. + +"I am very sorry for London, then." And he returned to the deserts. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +THE MAN OF SCIENCE. + + +After breakfast the next morning, Lillian retired, saying laughingly, that +she must go and see after her clothing club and her dear old women at the +almshouse, which, of course, made me look on her as more an angel than +ever. And while George was left with Lord Lynedale, I was summoned to a +private conference with the dean, in his study. + +I found him in a room lined with cabinets of curiosities, and hung all over +with strange horns, bones, and slabs of fossils. But I was not allowed +much time to look about me; for he commenced at once on the subject of +my studies, by asking me whether I was willing to prepare myself for the +university, by entering on the study of mathematics? + +I felt so intense a repugnance to them, that at the risk of offending +him--perhaps, for what I knew, fatally--I dared to demur. He smiled-- + +"I am convinced, young man, that even if you intended to follow poetry as a +profession--and a very poor one you will find it--yet you will never attain +to any excellence therein, without far stricter mental discipline than +any to which you have been accustomed. That is why I abominate our modern +poets. They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation, as if they +intended to be kings and world-makers, and all the while they indulge +themselves in the most loose and desultory habits of thought. Sir, if they +really believed their own grandiloquent assumptions, they would feel that +the responsibility of their mental training was greater, not less, than +any one's else. Like the Quakers, they fancy that they honour inspiration +by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic: the true poet, +like the rational Christian, believing that inspiration is continual +and orderly, that it reveals harmonious laws, not merely excites sudden +emotions. You understand me?" + +I did, tolerably; and subsequent conversations with him fixed the thoughts +sufficiently in my mind, to make me pretty sure that I am giving a faithful +verbal transcript of them. + +"You must study some science. Have you read any logic?" + +I mentioned Watts' "Logic," and Locke "On the Use of the +Understanding"--two books well known to reading artizans. + +"Ah," he said, "such books are very well, but they are merely popular. +'Aristotle,' 'Bitter on Induction,' and Kant's 'Prolegomena' and +'Logic'--when you had read them some seven or eight times over, you might +consider yourself as knowing somewhat about the matter." + +"I have read a little about induction in Whately." + +"Ah, very good book, but popular. Did you find that your method of thought +received any benefit from it?" + +"The truth is--I do not know whether I can quite express myself +clearly--but logic, like mathematics, seems to tell me too little about +things. It does not enlarge my knowledge of man or nature; and those are +what I thirst for. And you must remember--I hope I am not wrong in saying +it--that the case of a man of your class, who has the power of travelling, +of reading what he will, and seeing what he will, is very different from +that of an artisan, whose chances of observation are so sadly limited. You +must forgive us, if we are unwilling to spend our time over books which +tell us nothing about the great universe outside the shop-windows." + +He smiled compassionately. "Very true, my boy, There are two branches of +study, then, before you, and by either of them a competent subsistence is +possible, with good interest. Philology is one. But before you could arrive +at those depths in it which connect with ethnology, history, and geography, +you would require a lifetime of study. There remains yet another. I see you +stealing glances at those natural curiosities. In the study of them, you +would find, as I believe, more and more daily, a mental discipline superior +even to that which language or mathematics give. If I had been blest with +a son--but that is neither here nor there--it was my intention to have +educated him almost entirely as a naturalist. I think I should like to try +the experiment on a young man like yourself." + +Sandy Mackaye's definition of legislation for the masses, "Fiat +experimentum in corpore vili," rose up in my thoughts, and, half +unconsciously, passed my lips. The good old man only smiled. + +"That is not my reason, Mr. Locke. I should choose, by preference, a man +of your class for experiments, not because the nature is coarser, or less +precious in the scale of creation, but because I have a notion, for which, +like many others, I have been very much laughed at, that you are less +sophisticated, more simple and fresh from nature's laboratory, than the +young persons of the upper classes, who begin from the nursery to be more +or less trimmed up, and painted over by the artificial state of society--a +very excellent state, mind, Mr. Locke. Civilization is, next to +Christianity of course, the highest blessing; but not so good a state for +trying anthropological experiments on." + +I assured him of my great desire to be the subject of such an experiment; +and was encouraged by his smile to tell him something about my intense love +for natural objects, the mysterious pleasure which I had taken, from my +boyhood, in trying to classify them, and my visits to the British Museum, +for the purpose of getting at some general knowledge of the natural groups. + +"Excellent," he said, "young man; the very best sign I have yet seen in +you. And what have you read on these subjects?" + +I mentioned several books: Bingley, Bewick, "Humboldt's Travels," "The +Voyage of the Beagle," various scattered articles in the Penny and Saturday +Magazines, &c., &c. + +"Ah!" he said, "popular--you will find, if you will allow me to give you my +experience--" + +I assured him that I was only too much honoured--and I truly felt so. I +knew myself to be in the presence of my rightful superior--my master on +that very point of education which I idolized. Every sentence which he +spoke gave me fresh light on some matter or other; and I felt a worship for +him, totally irrespective of any vulgar and slavish respect for his rank +or wealth. The working man has no want for real reverence. Mr. Carlyle's +being a "gentlemen" has not injured his influence with the people. On the +contrary, it is the artisan's intense longing to find his real _lords_ and +guides, which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones. Whereof let +society take note. + +"Then," continued he, "your plan is to take up some one section of the +subject, and thoroughly exhaust that. Universal laws manifest themselves +only by particular instances. They say, man is the microcosm, Mr. Locke; +but the man of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its way. +It exemplifies, directly or indirectly, every physical law in the universe, +though it may not be two lines long. It is not only a part, but a mirror, +of the great whole. It has a definite relation to the whole world, and the +whole world has a relation to it. Really, by-the-by, I cannot give you a +better instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the Geryon +Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years ago, inhabiting +the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan, which fills up a long-desired link +between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I +think, though Professor Brown differs from me, connects both with the +Herbivorous Cetacea,--Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented man, but +a little too cautious in accepting any one's theories but his own. + +"There it is," he said, as he drew out of a drawer a little pamphlet of +some thirty pages--"an old man's darling. I consider that book the outcome +of thirteen years' labour." + +"It must be very deep," I replied, "to have been worth such long-continued +study." + +"Oh! science is her own reward. There is hardly a great physical law which +I have not brought to bear on the subject of that one small animal; and +above all--what is in itself worth a life's labour--I have, I believe, +discovered two entirely new laws of my own, though one of them, by-the-by, +has been broached by Professor Brown since, in his lectures. He might have +mentioned my name in connection with the subject, for I certainly imparted +my ideas to him, two years at least before the delivery of those lectures +of his. Professor Brown is a very great man, certainly, and a very +good man, but not quite so original as is generally supposed. Still, a +scientific man must expect his little disappointments and injustices. If +you were behind the scenes in the scientific world, I can assure you, +you would find as much party-spirit, and unfairness, and jealousy, and +emulation there, as anywhere else. Human nature, human nature, everywhere!" + +I said nothing, but thought the more; and took the book, promising to study +it carefully. + +"There is Cuvier's 'Animal Kingdom,' and a dictionary of scientific terms +to help you; and mind, it must be got up thoroughly, for I purpose to set +you an examination or two in it, a few days hence. Then I shall find out +whether you know what is worth all the information in the world." + +"What is that, sir?" + +"The art of getting information _artem discendi_, Mr. Locke, wherewith the +world is badly provided just now, as it is overstocked with the _artem +legendi_--the knack of running the eye over books, and fancying that it +understands them, because it can talk about them. You cannot play that +trick with my Geryon Trifurcifer, I assure you; he is as dry and tough as +his name. But, believe me, he is worth mastering, not because he is mine, +but simply because he is tough." + +I promised all diligence. + +"Very good. And be sure, if you intend to be a poet for these days (and I +really think you have some faculty for it), you must become a scientific +man. Science has made vast strides, and introduced entirely new modes of +looking at nature, and poets must live up to the age. I never read a word +of Goethe's verse, but I am convinced that he must be the great poet of +the day, just because he is the only one who has taken the trouble to go +into the details of practical science. And, in the mean time, I will give +you a lesson myself. I see you are longing to know the contents of these +cabinets. You shall assist me by writing out the names of this lot of +shells, just come from Australia, which I am now going to arrange." + +I set to work at once, under his directions; and passed that morning, and +the two or three following, delightfully. But I question whether the good +dean would have been well satisfied, had he known, how all his scientific +teaching confirmed my democratic opinions. The mere fact, that I could +understand these things when they were set before me, as well as any one +else, was to me a simple demonstration of the equality in worth, and +therefore in privilege, of all classes. It may be answered, that I had no +right to argue from myself to the mob; and that other working geniuses have +no right to demand universal enfranchisement for their whole class, just +because they, the exceptions, are fit for it. But surely it is hard to +call such an error, if it be one, "the insolent assumption of democratic +conceit," &c., &c. Does it not look more like the humility of men who +are unwilling to assert for themselves peculiar excellence, peculiar +privileges; who, like the apostles of old, want no glory, save that which +they can share with the outcast and the slave? Let society among other +matters, take note of that. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +CULTIVATED WOMEN. + + +I was thus brought in contact, for the first time in my life, with two +exquisite specimens of cultivated womanhood; and they naturally, as +the reader may well suppose, almost entirely engrossed my thoughts and +interest. + +Lillian, for so I must call her, became daily more and more agreeable; and +tried, as I fancied, to draw me out, and show me off to the best advantage; +whether from the desire of pleasing herself, or pleasing me, I know not, +and do not wish to know--but the consequences to my boyish vanity were such +as are more easy to imagine, than pleasant to describe. Miss Staunton, on +the other hand, became, I thought, more and more unpleasant; not that she +ever, for a moment, outstepped the bounds of the most perfect courtesy; but +her manner, which was soft to no one except to Lord Lynedale, was, when she +spoke to me, especially dictatorial and abrupt. She seemed to make a point +of carping at chance words of mine, and of setting me, down suddenly, by +breaking in with some severe, pithy observation, on conversations to which +she had been listening unobserved. She seemed, too, to view with dislike +anything like cordiality between me and Lillian--a dislike, which I was +actually at moments vain enough (such a creature is man!) to attribute +to--jealousy!!! till I began to suspect and hate her, as a proud, harsh, +and exclusive aristocrat. And my suspicion and hatred received their +confirmation, when, one morning, after an evening even more charming than +usual, Lillian came down, reserved, peevish, all but sulky, and showed that +that bright heaven of sunny features had room in it for a cloud, and that +an ugly one. But I, poor fool, only pitied her, made up my mind that some +one had ill-used her; and looked on her as a martyr--perhaps to that harsh +cousin of hers. + +That day was taken up with writing out answers to the dean's searching +questions on his pamphlet, in which, I believe, I acquitted myself +tolerably; and he seemed far more satisfied with my commentary than I was +with his text. He seemed to ignore utterly anything like religion, or even +the very notion of God, in his chains of argument. Nature was spoken of as +the wilier and producer of all the marvels which he describes; and every +word in the book, to my astonishment, might have been written just as +easily by an Atheist as by a dignitary of the Church of England. + +I could not help, that evening, hinting this defect, as delicately as I +could, to my good host, and was somewhat surprised to find that he did not +consider it a defect at all. + +"I am in no wise anxious to weaken the antithesis between natural and +revealed religion. Science may help the former, but it has absolutely +nothing to do with the latter. She stands on her own ground, has her own +laws, and is her own reward. Christianity is a matter of faith and of the +teaching of the Church. It must not go out of its way for science, and +science must not go out of her way for it; and where they seem to differ, +it is our duty to believe that they are reconcilable by fuller knowledge, +but not to clip truth in order to make it match with doctrine." + +"Mr. Carlyle," said Miss Staunton, in her abrupt way, "can see that the God +of Nature is the God of man." + +"Nobody denies that, my dear." + +"Except in every word and action; else why do they not write about Nature +as if it was the expression of a living, loving spirit, not merely a dead +machine?" + +"It may be very easy, my dear, for a Deist like Mr. Carlyle to see _his_ +God in Nature; but if he would accept the truths of Christianity, he would +find that there were deeper mysteries in them than trees and animals can +explain." + +"Pardon me, sir," I said, "but I think that a very large portion of +thoughtful working men agree with you, though, in their case, that opinion +has only increased their difficulties about Christianity. They complain +that they cannot identify the God of the Bible with the God of the world +around them; and one of their great complaints against Christianity is, +that it demands assent to mysteries which are independent of, and even +contradictory to, the laws of Nature." + +The old man was silent. + +"Mr. Carlyle is no Deist," said Miss Staunton; "and I am sure, that unless +the truths of Christianity contrive soon to get themselves justified by the +laws of science, the higher orders will believe in them as little as Mr. +Locke informs us that the working classes do." + +"You prophesy confidently, my darling." + +"Oh, Eleanor is in one of her prophetic moods to-night," said Lillian, +slyly. "She has been foretelling me I know not what misery and misfortune, +just because I choose to amuse myself in my own way." + +And she gave another sly pouting look at Eleanor, and then called me to +look over some engravings, chatting over them so charmingly!--and stealing, +every now and then, a pretty, saucy look at her cousin, which seemed to +say, "I shall do what I like, in spite of your predictions." + +This confirmed my suspicions that Eleanor had been trying to separate us; +and the suspicion received a further corroboration, indirect, and perhaps +very unfair, from the lecture which I got from my cousin after I went +up-stairs. + +He had been flattering me very much lately about "the impression" I was +making on the family, and tormenting me by compliments on the clever way +in which I "played my cards"; and when I denied indignantly any such +intention, patting me on the back, and laughing me down in a knowing way, +as much as to say that he was not to be taken in by my professions of +simplicity. He seemed to judge every one by himself, and to have no notion +of any middle characters between the mere green-horn and the deliberate +schemer. But to-night, after commencing with the usual compliments, he went +on: + +"Now, first let me give you one hint, and be thankful for it. Mind your +game with that Eleanor--Miss Staunton. She is a regular tyrant, I happen to +know: a strong-minded woman, with a vengeance. She manages every one here; +and unless you are in her good books, don't expect to keep your footing in +this house, my boy. So just mind and pay her a little more attention and +Miss Lillian a little less. After all, it is worth the trouble. She is +uncommonly well read; and says confounded clever things, too, when she +wakes up out of the sulks; and you may pick up a wrinkle or two from her, +worth pocketing. You mind what she says to you. You know she is going to be +married to Lord Lynedale." + +I nodded assent. + +"Well, then, if you want to hook him, you must secure her first." + +"I want to hook no one, George; I have told you that a thousand times." + +"Oh, no! certainly not--by no means! Why should you?" said the artful +dodger. And he swung, laughing, out of the room, leaving in my mind a +strange suspicion, of which I was ashamed, though I could not shake it off, +that he had remarked Eleanor's wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and +was willing, for some purpose of his own, to further that wish. The truth +is, I had very little respect for him, or trust in him: and I was learning +to look, habitually, for some selfish motive in all he said or did. +Perhaps, if I had acted more boldly upon what I did see, I should not have +been here now. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +SERMONS IN STONES. + + +The next afternoon was the last but one of my stay at D * * *. We were to +dine late, after sunset, and, before dinner, we went into the cathedral. +The choir had just finished practising. Certain exceedingly ill-looking +men, whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose +function was that of praising God, on the sole qualification of good bass +and tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and +behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves +from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and +pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us, with as little +reverence as Voltaire himself could have desired. + +I had often been in the cathedral before--indeed, we attended the service +daily, and I had been appalled, rather than astonished, by what I saw and +heard: the unintelligible service--the irreverent gabble of the choristers +and readers--the scanty congregation--the meagre portion of the vast +building which seemed to be turned to any use: but never more than that +evening, did I feel the desolateness, the doleful inutility, of that vast +desert nave, with its aisles and transepts--built for some purpose or other +now extinct. The whole place seemed to crush and sadden me; and I could not +re-echo Lillian's remark: + +"How those pillars, rising story above story, and those lines of pointed +arches, all lead the eye heavenward! It is a beautiful notion, that about +pointed architecture being symbolic of Christianity." + +"I ought to be very much ashamed of my stupidity," I answered; "but I +cannot feel that, though I believe I ought to do so. That vast groined +roof, with its enormous weight of hanging stone, seems to crush one--to +bar out the free sky above. Those pointed windows, too--how gloriously the +western sun is streaming through them! but their rich hues only dim and +deface his light. I can feel what you say, when I look at the cathedral on +the outside; there, indeed, every line sweeps the eye upward--carries it +from one pinnacle to another, each with less and less standing-ground, till +at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and leaves the +spirit to wing its way, unsupported and alone, into the ether. + +"Perhaps," I added, half bitterly, "these cathedrals may be true symbols +of the superstition which created them--on the outside, offering to +enfranchise the soul and raise it up to heaven; but when the dupes had +entered, giving them only a dark prison, and a crushing bondage, which +neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear." + +"You may sneer at them, if you will, Mr. Locke," said Eleanor, in her +severe, abrupt way. "The working classes would have been badly off without +them. They were, in their day, the only democratic institution in the +world; and the only socialist one too. The only chance a poor man had of +rising by his worth, was by coming to the monastery. And bitterly the +working classes felt the want of them, when they fell. Your own Cobbett can +tell you that." + +"Ah," said Lillian, "how different it must have been four hundred years +ago!--how solemn and picturesque those old monks must have looked, gliding +about the aisles!--and how magnificent the choir must have been, before all +the glass and carving, and that beautiful shrine of St. * * * *, blazing +with gold and jewels, were all plundered and defaced by those horrid +Puritans!" + +"Say, reformer-squires," answered Eleanor; "for it was they who did the +thing; only it was found convenient, at the Restoration, to lay on +the people of the seventeenth century the iniquities which the +country-gentlemen committed in the sixteenth." + +"Surely," I added, emboldened by her words, "if the monasteries were what +their admirers say, some method of restoring the good of the old system, +without its evil, ought to be found; and would be found, if it were not--" +I paused, recollecting whose guest I was. + +"If it were not, I suppose," said Eleanor, "for those lazy, overfed, +bigoted hypocrites, the clergy. That, I presume, is the description of them +to which you have been most accustomed. Now, let me ask you one question. +Do you mean to condemn, just now, the Church as it was, or the Church as +it is, or the Church as it ought to be? Radicals have a habit of confusing +those three questions, as they have of confusing other things when it suits +them." + +"Really," I said--for my blood was rising--"I do think that, with the +confessed enormous wealth of the clergy, the cathedral establishments +especially, they might do more for the people." + +"Listen to me a little, Mr. Locke. The laity now-a-days take a pride in +speaking evil of the clergy, never seeing that if they are bad, the laity +have made them so. Why, what do you impute to them? Their worldliness, +their being like the world, like the laity round them--like you, in short? +Improve yourselves, and by so doing, if there is this sad tendency in the +clergy to imitate you, you will mend them; if you do not find that after +all, it is they who will have to mend you. 'As with the people, so with the +priest,' is the everlasting law. When, fifty years ago, all classes were +drunkards, from the statesman to the peasant, the clergy were drunken +also, but not half so bad as the laity. Now the laity are eaten up with +covetousness and ambition; and the clergy are covetous and ambitious, but +not half so bad as the laity. The laity, and you working men especially, +are the dupes of frothy, insincere, official rant, as Mr. Carlyle would +call it, in Parliament, on the hustings, at every debating society and +Chartist meeting; and, therefore, the clergyman's sermons are apt to be +just what people like elsewhere, and what, therefore, they suppose people +will like there." + +"If, then," I answered, "in spite of your opinions, you confess the clergy +to be so bad, why are you so angry with men of our opinions, if we do plot +sometimes a little against the Church?" + +"I do not think you know what my opinions are, Mr. Locke. Did you not hear +me just now praising the monasteries, because they were socialist and +democratic? But why is the badness of the clergy any reason for pulling +down the Church? That is another of the confused irrationalities into which +you all allow yourselves to fall. What do you mean by crying shame on a man +for being a bad clergyman, if a good clergyman is not a good thing? If the +very idea of a clergyman, was abominable, as your Church-destroyers ought +to say, you ought to praise a man for being a bad one, and not acting out +this same abominable idea of priesthood. Your very outcry against the sins +of the clergy, shows that, even in your minds, a dim notion lies somewhere +that a clergyman's vocation is, in itself, a divine, a holy, a beneficent +one." + +"I never looked at it in that light, certainly," said I, somewhat +staggered. + +"Very likely not. One word more, for I may not have another opportunity +of speaking to you as I would on these matters. You working men complain +of the clergy for being bigoted and obscurantist, and hating the cause of +the people. Does not nine-tenths of the blame of that lie at your door? I +took up, the other day, at hazard, one of your favourite liberty-preaching +newspapers; and I saw books advertised in it, whose names no modest woman +should ever behold; doctrines and practices advocated in it from which +all the honesty, the decency, the common human feeling which is left in +the English mind, ought to revolt, and does revolt. You cannot deny it. +Your class has told the world that the cause of liberty, equality, and +fraternity, the cause which the working masses claim as theirs, identifies +itself with blasphemy and indecency, with the tyrannous persecutions of +trades-unions, with robbery, assassinations, vitriol-bottles, and midnight +incendiarism. And then you curse the clergy for taking you at your word! +Whatsoever they do, you attack them. If they believe you, and stand up for +common, morality, and for the truths which they know are all-important to +poor as well as rich, you call them bigots and persecutors; while if they +neglect, in any way, the very Christianity for believing which you insult +them, you turn round and call them hypocrites. Mark my words, Mr. Locke, +till you gain the respect and confidence of the clergy, you will never +rise. The day will come when you will find that the clergy are the only +class who can help you. Ah, you may shake your head. I warn you of it. They +were the only bulwark of the poor against the mediaeval tyranny of Rank; +you will find them the only bulwark against the modern tyranny of Mammon." + +I was on the point of entreating her to explain herself further, but at +that critical moment Lillian interposed. + +"Now, stay your prophetic glances into the future; here come Lynedale and +papa." And in a moment, Eleanor's whole manner and countenance altered--the +petulant, wild unrest, the harsh, dictatorial tone vanished; and she +turned to meet her lover, with a look of tender, satisfied devotion, which +transfigured her whole face. It was most strange, the power he had over +her. His presence, even at a distance, seemed to fill her whole being +with rich quiet life. She watched him with folded hands, like a mystic +worshipper, waiting for the afflatus of the spirit; and, suspicious and +angry as I felt towards her, I could not help being drawn to her by this +revelation of depths of strong healthy feeling, of which her usual manner +gave so little sign. + +This conversation thoroughly puzzled me; it showed me that there might be +two sides to the question of the people's cause, as well as to that of +others. It shook a little my faith in the infallibility of my own class, +to hear such severe animadversions on them, from a person who professed +herself as much a disciple of Carlyle as any working man; and who evidently +had no lack either of intellect to comprehend or boldness to speak out his +doctrines; who could praise the old monasteries for being democratic and +socialist, and spoke far more severely of the clergy than I could have +done--because she did not deal merely in trite words of abuse, but showed a +real analytic insight into the causes of their short-coming. + + * * * * * + +That same evening the conversation happened to turn on dress, of which Miss +Staunton spoke scornfully and disparagingly, as mere useless vanity and +frippery--an empty substitute for real beauty of person as well as the +higher beauty of mind. And I, emboldened by the courtesy with which I was +always called on to take my share in everything that was said or done, +ventured to object, humbly enough, to her notions. + +"But is not beauty," I said, "in itself a good and blessed thing, +softening, refining, rejoicing the eyes of all who behold?" (And my eyes, +as I spoke, involuntary rested on Lillian's face--who saw it, and blushed.) +"Surely nothing which helps beauty is to be despised. And, without the +charm of dress, beauty, even that of expression, does not really do itself +justice. How many lovely and lovable faces there are, for instance, +among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which +ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the +beholder--but are now never appreciated, because they have not the same +fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the South +Sea Islands possesses!" + +Lillian said it was so very true--she had really never thought of it +before--and somehow I gained courage to go on. + +"Besides, dress is a sort of sacrament, if I may use the word--a sure sign +of the wearer's character; according as any one is orderly, or modest, or +tasteful, or joyous, or brilliant"--and I glanced again at Lillian--"those +excellences, or the want of them, are sure to show themselves, in the +colours they choose, and the cut of their garments. In the workroom, I and +a friend of mine used often to amuse ourselves over the clothes we were +making, by speculating from them on the sort of people the wearers were to +be; and I fancy we were not often wrong." + +My cousin looked daggers at me, and for a moment I fancied I had committed +a dreadful mistake in mentioning my tailor-life. So I had in his eyes, but +not in those of the really well-bred persons round me. + +"Oh, how very amusing it must have been! I think I shall turn milliner, +Eleanor, for the fun of divining every one's little failings from their +caps and gowns!" + +"Go on, Mr. Locke," said the dean, who had seemed buried in the +"Transactions of the Royal Society." "The fact is novel, and I am more +obliged to any one who gives me that, than if he gave me a bank-note. The +money gets spent and done with; but I cannot spend the fact: it remains for +life as permanent capital, returning interest and compound interest _ad +infinitum_. By-the-by, tell me about those same workshops. I have heard +more about them than I like to believe true." + +And I did tell him all about them; and spoke, my blood rising as I went on, +long and earnestly, perhaps eloquently. Now and then I got abashed, and +tried to stop; and then the dean informed me that I was speaking well and +sensibly, while Lillian entreated me to go on. She had never conceived +such things possible--it was as interesting as a novel, &c., &c.; and Miss +Staunton sat with compressed lips and frowning brow, apparently thinking of +nothing but her book, till I felt quite angry at her apathy--for such it +seemed to me to be. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +MY FALL. + + +And now the last day of our stay at D * * * had arrived, and I had as yet +heard nothing of the prospects of my book; though, indeed, the company +in which I had found myself had driven literary ambition, for the time +being, out of my head, and bewitched me to float down the stream of daily +circumstance, satisfied to snatch the enjoyment of each present moment. +That morning, however, after I had fulfilled my daily task of arranging +and naming objects of natural history, the dean settled himself back in +his arm-chair, and bidding me sit down, evidently meditated a business +conversation. + +He had heard from his publisher, and read his letter to me. "The poems were +on the whole much liked. The most satisfactory method of publishing for all +parties, would be by procuring so many subscribers, each agreeing to take +so many copies. In consideration of the dean's known literary judgment and +great influence, the publisher would, as a private favour, not object to +take the risk of any further expenses." + +So far everything sounded charming. The method was not a very independent +one, but it was the only one; and I should actually have the delight of +having published a volume. But, alas! "he thought that the sale of the book +might be greatly facilitated, if certain passages of a strong political +tendency were omitted. He did not wish personally to object to them as +statements of facts, or to the pictorial vigour with which they were +expressed; but he thought that they were somewhat too strong for the +present state of the public taste; and though he should be the last to +allow any private considerations to influence his weak patronage of rising +talent, yet, considering his present connexion, he should hardly wish to +take on himself the responsibility of publishing such passages, unless with +great modifications." + +"You see," said the good old man, "the opinion of respectable practical +men, who know the world, exactly coincides with mine. I did not like to +tell you that I could not help in the publication of your MSS. in their +present state; but I am sure, from the modesty and gentleness which I have +remarked in you, your readiness to listen to reason, and your pleasing +freedom from all violence or coarseness in expressing your opinions, that +you will not object to so exceedingly reasonable a request, which, after +all, is only for your good. Ah! young man," he went on, in a more feeling +tone than I had yet heard from him, "if you were once embroiled in that +political world, of which you know so little, you would soon be crying like +David, 'Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I flee away and be +at rest!' Do you fancy that you can alter a fallen world? What it is, it +always has been, and will be to the end. Every age has its political and +social nostrums, my dear young man, and fancies them infallible; and +the next generation arises to curse them as failures in practice, and +superstitious in theory, and try some new nostrum of its own." + +I sighed. + +"Ah! you may sigh. But we have each of us to be disenchanted of our dream. +There was a time once when I talked republicanism as loudly as raw youth +ever did--when I had an excuse for it, too; for when I was a boy, I saw the +French Revolution; and it was no wonder if young, enthusiastic brains +were excited by all sorts of wild hopes--'perfectibility of the species,' +'rights of man,' 'universal liberty, equality, and brotherhood.'--My dear +sir, there is nothing new under the sun; all that is stale and trite to +a septuagenarian, who has seen where it all ends. I speak to you freely, +because I am deeply interested in you. I feel that this is the important +question of your life, and that you have talents, the possession of which +is a heavy responsibility. Eschew politics, once and for all, as I have +done. I might have been, I may tell you, a bishop at this moment, if I had +condescended to meddle again in those party questions of which my youthful +experience sickened me. But I knew that I should only weaken my own +influence, as that most noble and excellent man, Dr. Arnold, did, by +interfering in politics. The poet, like the clergyman and the philosopher, +has nothing to do with politics. Let them choose the better part, and it +shall not be taken from them. The world may rave," he continued, waxing +eloquent as he approached his favourite subject--"the world may rave, but +in the study there is quiet. The world may change, Mr. Locke, and will; but +'the earth abideth for ever.' Solomon had seen somewhat of politics, and +social improvement, and so on; and behold, then, as now, 'all was vanity +and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and +that which is wanting cannot be numbered. What profit hath a man of all his +labour which he taketh under the sun? The thing which hath been, it is that +which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun. One generation +passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.' No +wonder that the wisest of men took refuge from such experience, as I have +tried to do, in talking of all herbs, from the cedar of Lebanon to the +hyssop that groweth on the wall! + +"Ah! Mr. Locke," he went on, in a soft melancholy, half-abstracted +tone--"ah! Mr. Locke, I have felt deeply, and you will feel some day, the +truth of Jarno's saying in 'Wilhelm Meister,' when he was wandering alone +in the Alps, with his geological hammer, 'These rocks, at least, tell +me no lies, as men do.' Ay, there is no lie in Nature, no discord in +the revelations of science, in the laws of the universe. Infinite, pure, +unfallen, earth-supporting Titans, fresh as on the morning of creation, +those great laws endure; your only true democrats, too--for nothing is too +great or too small for them to take note of. No tiniest gnat, or speck of +dust, but they feed it, guide it, and preserve it,--Hail and snow, wind and +vapour, fulfilling their Maker's word; and like him, too, hiding themselves +from the wise and prudent, and revealing themselves unto babes. Yes, Mr. +Locke; it is the childlike, simple, patient, reverent heart, which science +at once demands and cultivates. To prejudice or haste, to self-conceit or +ambition, she proudly shuts her treasuries--to open them to men of humble +heart, whom this world thinks simple dreamers--her Newtons, and Owens, +and Faradays. Why should you not become such a man as they? You have the +talents--you have the love for nature, you seem to have the gentle and +patient spirit, which, indeed, will grow up more and more in you, if you +become a real student of science. Or, if you must be a poet, why not sing +of nature, and leave those to sing political squabbles, who have no eye for +the beauty of her repose? How few great poets have been politicians!" + +I gently suggested Milton. + +"Ay! he became a great poet only when he had deserted politics, because +they had deserted him. In blindness and poverty, in the utter failure of +all his national theories, he wrote the works which have made him immortal. +Was Shakespeare a politician? or any one of the great poets who have arisen +during the last thirty years? Have they not all seemed to consider it a +sacred duty to keep themselves, as far as they could, out of party strife?" + +I quoted Southey, Shelley, and Burns, as instances to the contrary; but his +induction was completed already, to his own satisfaction. + +"Poor dear Southey was a great verse-maker, rather than a great poet; and +I always consider that his party-prejudices and party-writing narrowed and +harshened a mind which ought to have been flowing forth freely and lovingly +towards all forms of life. And as for Shelley and Burns, their politics +dictated to them at once the worst portions of their poetry and of their +practice. Shelley, what little I have read of him, only seems himself when +he forgets radicalism for nature; and you would not set Burns' life or +death, either, as a model for imitation in any class. Now, do you know, I +must ask you to leave me a little. I am somewhat fatigued with this long +discussion" (in which, certainly, I had borne no great share); "and I am +sure, that after all I have said, you will see the propriety of acceding to +the publisher's advice. Go and think over it, and let me have your answer +by post time." + +I did go and think over it--too long for my good. If I had acted on the +first impulse, I should have refused, and been safe. These passages were +the very pith and marrow of the poems. They were the very words which I had +felt it my duty, my glory, to utter. I, who had been a working man, who had +experienced all their sorrows and temptations--I, seemed called by every +circumstance of my life to preach their cause, to expose their wrongs--I +to squash my convictions, to stultify my book for the sake of popularity, +money, patronage! And yet--all that involved seeing more of Lillian. They +were only too powerful inducements in themselves, alas! but I believe I +could have resisted them tolerably, if they had not been backed by love. +And so a struggle arose, which the rich reader may think a very fantastic +one, though the poor man will understand it, and surely pardon it +also--seeing that he himself is Man. Could I not, just once in a way, serve +God and Mammon at once?--or rather, not Mammon, but Venus: a worship which +looked to me, and really was in my case, purer than all the Mariolatry in +Popedom. After all, the fall might not be so great as it seemed--perhaps I +was not infallible on these same points. (It is wonderful how humble and +self-denying one becomes when one is afraid of doing one's duty.) Perhaps +the dean might be right. He had been a republican himself once, certainly. +The facts, indeed, which I had stated, there could be no doubt of; but I +might have viewed them through a prejudiced and angry medium. I might have +been not quite logical in my deductions from them--I might.... In short, +between "perhapses" and "mights" I fell--a very deep, real, damnable fall; +and consented to emasculate my poems, and become a flunkey and a dastard. + +I mentioned my consent that evening to the party; the dean purred content +thereat. Eleanor, to my astonishment, just said, sternly and abruptly, + +"Weak!" and then turned away, while Lillian began: + +"Oh! what a pity! And really they were some of the prettiest verses of all! +But of course my father must know best; you are quite right to be guided by +him, and do whatever is proper and prudent. After all, papa, I have got the +naughtiest of them all, you know, safe. Eleanor set it to music, and wrote +it out in her book, and I thought it was so charming that I copied it." + +What Lillian said about herself I drank in as greedily as usual; what she +said about Eleanor fell on a heedless ear, and vanished, not to reappear in +my recollection till--But I must not anticipate. + +So it was all settled pleasantly; and I sat up that evening writing a +bit of verse for Lillian, about the Old Cathedral, and "Heaven-aspiring +towers," and "Aisles of cloistered shade," and all that sort of thing; +which I did not believe or care for; but I thought it would please her, and +so it did; and I got golden smiles and compliments for my first, though not +my last, insincere poem. I was going fast down hill, in my hurry to rise. +However, as I said, it was all pleasant enough. I was to return to town, +and there await the dean's orders; and, most luckily, I had received that +morning from Sandy Mackaye a characteristic letter: + +"Gowk, Telemachus, hearken! Item 1. Ye're fou wi' the Circean cup, aneath +the shade o' shovel hats and steeple houses. + +"Item 2. I, cuif-Mentor that I am, wearing out a gude pair o' gude Scots +brogues that my sister's husband's third cousin sent me a towmond gane fra +Aberdeen, rinning ower the town to a' journals, respectable and ither, +anent the sellin o' your 'Autobiography of an Engine-Boiler in the Vauxhall +Road,' the whilk I ha' disposit o' at the last, to O'Flynn's _Weekly +Warwhoop_; and gin ye ha' ony mair sic trash in your head, you may get your +meal whiles out o' the same kist; unless, as I sair misdoubt, ye're praying +already, like Eli's bairns, 'to be put into ane o' the priest's offices, +that ye may eat a piece o' bread.' + +"Yell be coming the-morrow? I'm lane without ye; though I look for ye +surely to come ben wi' a gowd shoulder-note, and a red nose." + +This letter, though it hit me hard, and made me, I confess, a little +angry at the moment with my truest friend, still offered me a means of +subsistence, and enabled me to decline safely the pecuniary aid which I +dreaded the dean's offering me. And yet I felt dispirited and ill at ease. +My conscience would not let me enjoy the success I felt I had attained. But +next morning I saw Lillian; and I forgot books, people's cause, conscience, +and everything. + + * * * * * + +I went home by coach--a luxury on which my cousin insisted--as he did on +lending me the fare; so that in all I owed him somewhat more than eleven +pounds. But I was too happy to care for a fresh debt, and home I went, +considering my fortune made. + +My heart fell, as I stepped into the dingy little old shop! Was it the +meanness of the place after the comfort and elegance of my late abode? +Was it disappointment at not finding Mackaye at home? Or was it that +black-edged letter which lay waiting for me on the table? I was afraid to +open it; I knew not why. I turned it over and over several times, trying +to guess whose the handwriting on the cover might be; the postmark was two +days old; and at last I broke the seal. + + "Sir,--This is to inform you that your mother, Mrs. Locke, died this + morning, a sensible sinner, not without assurance of her election: and + that her funeral is fixed for Wednesday, the 29th instant. + + "The humble servant of the Lord's people, + + "J. WIGGINTON." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +SHORT AND SAD. + + +I shall pass over the agonies of the next few days. There is +self-exenteration enough and to spare in my story, without dilating on +them. They are too sacred to publish, and too painful, alas! even to +recall. I write my story, too, as a working man. Of those emotions which +are common to humanity, I shall say but little--except when it is necessary +to prove that the working man has feelings like the rest of his kind, +But those feelings may, in this case, be supplied by the reader's own +imagination. Let him represent them to himself as bitter, as remorseful as +he will, he will not equal the reality. True, she had cast me off; but had +I not rejoiced in that rejection which should have been my shame? True, I +had fed on the hope of some day winning reconciliation, by winning fame; +but before the fame had arrived, the reconciliation had become impossible. +I had shrunk from going back to her, as I ought to have done, in filial +humility, and, therefore, I was not allowed to go back to her in the pride +of success. Heaven knows, I had not forgotten her. Night and day I had +thought of her with prayers and blessings; but I had made a merit of my own +love to her--my forgiveness of her, as I dared to call it. I had pampered +my conceit with a notion that I was a martyr in the cause of genius and +enlightenment. How hollow, windy, heartless, all that looked now. There! I +will say no more. Heaven preserve any who read these pages from such days +and nights as I dragged on till that funeral, and for weeks after it was +over, when I had sat once more in the little old chapel, with all the +memories of my childhood crowding up, and tantalizing me with the vision +of their simple peace--never, never, to return! I heard my mother's dying +pangs, her prayers, her doubts, her agonies, for my reprobate soul, +dissected for the public good by my old enemy, Mr. Wigginton, who dragged +in among his fulsome eulogies of my mother's "signs of grace," rejoicings +that there were "babes span-long in hell." I saw my sister Susan, now a +tall handsome woman, but become all rigid, sour, with coarse grim lips, and +that crushed, self-conscious, reserved, almost dishonest look about the +eyes, common to fanatics of every creed. I heard her cold farewell, as she +put into my hands certain notes and diaries of my mother's, which she had +bequeathed to me on her death-bed. I heard myself proclaimed inheritor of +some small matters of furniture, which had belonged to her; told Susan +carelessly to keep them for herself; and went forth, fancying that the +curse of Cain was on my brow. + +I took home the diary; but several days elapsed before I had courage to +open it. Let the words I read there be as secret as the misery which +dictated them. I had broken my mother's heart!--no! I had not!--The +infernal superstition which taught her to fancy that Heaven's love was +narrower than her own--that God could hate his creature, not for its sins, +but for the very nature which he had given it--that, that had killed her. + +And I remarked too, with a gleam of hope, that in several places where +sunshine seemed ready to break through the black cloud of fanatic +gloom--where she seemed inclined not merely to melt towards me (for there +was, in every page, an under-current of love deeper than death, and +stronger than the grave), but also to dare to trust God on my behalf--whole +lines carefully erased page after page torn out, evidently long after the +MSS. were written. I believe, to this day, that either my poor sister or +her father-confessor was the perpetrator of that act. The _fraus pia_ is +not yet extinct; and it is as inconvenient now as it was in popish times, +to tell the whole truth about saints, when they dare to say or do things +which will not quite fit into the formulae of their sect. + +But what was to become of Susan? Though my uncle continued to her +the allowance which he had made to my mother, yet I was her natural +protector--and she was my only tie upon earth. Was I to lose her, too? +Might we not, after all, be happy together, in some little hole in Chelsea, +like Elia and his Bridget? That question was solved for me. She declined +my offers; saying, that she could not live with any one whose religious +opinions differed from her own, and that she had already engaged a room at +the house of a Christian friend; and was shortly to be united to that dear +man of God, Mr. Wigginton, who was to be removed to the work of the Lord in +Manchester. + +I knew the scoundrel, but it would have been impossible for me to undeceive +her. Perhaps he was only a scoundrel--perhaps he would not ill-treat her. +And yet--my own little Susan! my play-fellow! my only tie on earth!--to +lose her--and not only her, but her respect, her love!--And my spirit, deep +enough already, sank deeper still into sadness; and I felt myself alone on +earth, and clung to Mackaye as to a father--and a father indeed that old +man was to me. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +PEGASUS IN HARNESS. + + +But, in sorrow or in joy, I had to earn my bread; and so, too, had +Crossthwaite, poor fellow! How he contrived to feed himself and his little +Katie for the next few years is more than I can tell; at all events he +worked hard enough. He scribbled, agitated, ran from London to Manchester, +and Manchester to Bradford, spouting, lecturing--sowing the east wind, I am +afraid, and little more. Whose fault was it? What could such a man do, with +that fervid tongue, and heart, and brain of his, in such a station as his, +such a time as this? Society had helped to make him an agitator. Society +has had, more or less, to take the consequences of her own handiwork. For +Crossthwaite did not speak without hearers. He could make the fierce, +shrewd, artisan nature flash out into fire--not always celestial, nor +always, either, infernal. So he agitated and lived--how, I know not. That +he did do so, is evident from the fact that he and Katie are at this moment +playing chess in the cabin, before my eyes, and making love, all the while, +as if they had not been married a week.... Ah, well! + +I, however, had to do more than get my bread; I had to pay off these +fearful eleven pounds odd, which, now that all the excitement of my stay at +D * * * had been so sadly quenched, lay like lead upon my memory. My list +of subscribers filled slowly, and I had no power of increasing it by any +canvassings of my own. My uncle, indeed, had promised to take two copies, +and my cousin one; not wishing, of course, to be so uncommercial as to run +any risk, before they had seen whether my poems would succeed. But, with +those exceptions, the dean had it all his own way; and he could not be +expected to forego his own literary labours for my sake; so, through all +that glaring summer, and sad foggy autumn, and nipping winter, I had to +get my bread as I best could--by my pen. Mackaye grumbled at my writing +so much, and so fast, and sneered about the _furor scribendi_. But it +was hardly fair upon me. "My mouth craved it of me," as Solomon says. +I had really no other means of livelihood. Even if I could have gotten +employment as a tailor, in the honourable trade, I loathed the business +utterly--perhaps, alas! to confess the truth, I was beginning to despise +it. I could bear to think of myself as a poor genius, in connection with my +new wealthy and high-bred patrons; for there was precedent for the thing. +Penniless bards and squires of low degree, low-born artists, ennobled by +their pictures--there was something grand in the notion of mind triumphant +over the inequalities of rank, and associating with the great and wealthy +as their spiritual equal, on the mere footing of its own innate nobility; +no matter to what den it might return, to convert it into a temple of the +Muses, by the glorious creations of its fancy, &c., &c. But to go back +daily from the drawing-room and the publisher's to the goose and the +shopboard, was too much for my weakness, even if it had been physically +possible, as, thank Heaven, it was not. + +So I became a hack-writer, and sorrowfully, but deliberately, "put my +Pegasus into heavy harness," as my betters had done before me. It was +miserable work, there is no denying it--only not worse than tailoring. +To try and serve God and Mammon too; to make miserable compromises daily +between the two great incompatibilities, what was true, and what would +pay; to speak my mind, in fear and trembling, by hints, and halves, and +quarters; to be daily hauling poor Truth just up to the top of the well, +and then, frightened at my own success, let her plump down again to the +bottom; to sit there trying to teach others, while my mind was in a whirl +of doubt; to feed others' intellects while my own were hungering; to grind +on in the Philistine's mill, or occasionally make sport for them, like some +weary-hearted clown grinning in a pantomime in a "light article," as blind +as Samson, but not, alas! as strong, for indeed my Delilah of the West-end +had clipped my locks, and there seemed little chance of their growing +again. That face and that drawing-room flitted before me from morning till +eve, and enervated and distracted my already over-wearied brain. + +I had no time, besides, to concentrate my thoughts sufficiently for poetry; +no time to wait for inspiration. From the moment I had swallowed my +breakfast, I had to sit scribbling off my thoughts anyhow in prose; and +soon my own scanty stock was exhausted, and I was forced to beg, borrow, +and steal notions and facts wherever I could get them. Oh! the misery of +having to read not what I longed to know, but what I thought would pay! +to skip page after page of interesting matter, just to pick out a single +thought or sentence which could be stitched into my patchwork! and then +the still greater misery of seeing the article which I had sent to press +a tolerably healthy and lusty bantling, appear in print next week after +suffering the inquisition tortures of the editorial censorship, all maimed, +and squinting, and one-sided, with the colour rubbed off its poor cheeks, +and generally a villanous hang-dog look of ferocity, so different from its +birth-smile that I often did not know my own child again!--and then, when I +dared to remonstrate, however feebly, to be told, by way of comfort, that +the public taste must be consulted! It gave me a hopeful notion of the said +taste, certainly; and often and often I groaned in spirit over the temper +of my own class, which not only submitted to, but demanded such one-sided +bigotry, prurience, and ferocity, from those who set up as its guides and +teachers. + +Mr. O'Flynn, editor of the _Weekly Warwhoop_, whose white slave I now found +myself, was, I am afraid, a pretty faithful specimen of that class, as it +existed before the bitter lesson of the 10th of April brought the Chartist +working men and the Chartist press to their senses. Thereon sprang up a +new race of papers, whose moral tone, whatever may be thought of their +political or doctrinal opinions, was certainly not inferior to that of the +Whig and Tory press. The _Commonwealth_, the _Standard of Freedom_, the +_Plain Speaker_, were reprobates, if to be a Chartist is to be a reprobate: +but none except the most one-sided bigots could deny them the praise of +a stern morality and a lofty earnestness, a hatred of evil and a craving +after good, which would often put to shame many a paper among the oracles +of Belgravia and Exeter Hall. But those were the days of lubricity and +O'Flynn. Not that the man was an unredeemed scoundrel. He was no more +profligate, either in his literary or his private morals, than many a man +who earns his hundreds, sometimes his thousands, a year, by prophesying +smooth things to Mammon, crying in daily leaders "Peace! peace!" when +there is no peace, and daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and +self-satisfied covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics +and garbled foreign news--till "the storm shall fall, and the breaking +thereof cometh suddenly in an instant." Let those of the respectable press +who are without sin, cast the first stone at the unrespectable. Many of +the latter class, who have been branded as traitors and villains, were +single-minded, earnest, valiant men; and, as for even O'Flynn, and those +worse than him, what was really the matter with them was, that they were +too honest--they spoke out too much of their whole minds. Bewildered, like +Lear, amid the social storm, they had determined, like him, to become +"unsophisticated," "to owe the worm no silk, the cat no perfume"--seeing, +indeed, that if they had, they could not have paid for them; so they tore +off, of their own will, the peacock's feathers of gentility, the sheep's +clothing of moderation, even the fig-leaves of decent reticence, and became +just what they really were--just what hundreds more would become, who +now sit in the high places of the earth, if it paid them as well to +be unrespectable as it does to be respectable; if the selfishness and +covetousness, bigotry and ferocity, which are in them, and more or less in +every man, had happened to enlist them against existing evils, instead of +for them. O'Flynn would have been gladly as respectable as they; but, in +the first place, he must have starved; and in the second place, he must +have lied; for he believed in his own radicalism with his whole soul. There +was a ribald sincerity, a frantic courage in the man. He always spoke the +truth when it suited him, and very often when it did not. He did see, which +is more than all do, that oppression is oppression, and humbug, humbug. +He had faced the gallows before now without flinching. He had spouted +rebellion in the Birmingham Bullring, and elsewhere, and taken the +consequences like a man; while his colleagues left their dupes to the +tender mercies of broadswords and bayonets, and decamped in the disguise +of sailors, old women, and dissenting preachers. He had sat three months +in Lancaster Castle, the Bastille of England, one day perhaps to fall like +that Parisian one, for a libel which he never wrote, because he would +not betray his cowardly contributor. He had twice pleaded his own cause, +without help of attorney, and showed himself as practised in every +law-quibble and practical cheat as if he had been a regularly ordained +priest of the blue-bag; and each time, when hunted at last into a corner, +had turned valiantly to bay, with wild witty Irish eloquence, "worthy," as +the press say of poor misguided Mitchell, "of a better cause." Altogether, +a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided, ready to do and suffer +anything fair or foul, for what he honestly believed--if a confused, +virulent positiveness be worthy of the name "belief"--to be the true and +righteous cause. + +Those who class all mankind compendiously and comfortably under the two +exhaustive species of saints and villains, may consider such a description +garbled and impossible. I have seen few men, but never yet met I among +those few either perfect saint or perfect villain. I draw men as I have +found them--inconsistent, piece-meal, better than their own actions, +worse than their own opinions, and poor O'Flynn among the rest. Not that +there were no questionable spots in the sun of his fair fame. It was +whispered that he had in old times done dirty work for Dublin Castle +bureaucrats--nay, that he had even, in a very hard season, written court +poetry for the _Morning Post_; but all these little peccadilloes he +carefully veiled in that kindly mist which hung over his youthful years. +He had been a medical student, and got plucked, his foes declared, in his +examination. He had set up a savings-bank, which broke. He had come over +from Ireland, to agitate for "repale" and "rint," and, like a wise man as +he was, had never gone back again. He had set up three or four papers in +his time, and entered into partnership with every leading democrat in turn; +but his papers failed, and he quarrelled with his partners, being addicted +to profane swearing and personalities. And now, at last, after Ulyssean +wanderings, he had found rest in the office of the _Weekly Warwhoop_, if +rest it could be called, that perennial hurricane of plotting, railing, +sneering, and bombast, in which he lived, never writing a line, on +principle, till he had worked himself up into a passion. + +I will dwell no more on so distasteful a subject. Such leaders, let us +hope, belong only to the past--to the youthful self-will and licentiousness +of democracy; and as for reviling O'Flynn, or any other of his class, no +man has less right than myself, I fear, to cast stones at such as they. +I fell as low as almost any, beneath the besetting sins of my class; and +shall I take merit to myself, because God has shown me, a little earlier +perhaps than to them, somewhat more of the true duties and destinies of The +Many? Oh, that they could see the depths of my affection to them! Oh, that +they could see the shame and self-abasement with which, in rebuking their +sins, I confess my own! If they are apt to be flippant and bitter, so was +I. If they lust to destroy, without knowing what to build up instead, so +did I. If they make an almighty idol of that Electoral Reform, which ought +to be, and can be, only a preliminary means, and expect final deliverance +from "their twenty-thousandth part of a talker in the national palaver," +so did I. Unhealthy and noisome as was the literary atmosphere in which I +now found myself, it was one to my taste. The very contrast between the +peaceful, intellectual luxury which I had just witnessed, and the misery of +my class and myself, quickened my delight in it. In bitterness, in sheer +envy, I threw my whole soul into it, and spoke evil, and rejoiced in evil. +It was so easy to find fault! It pampered my own self-conceit, my own +discontent, while it saved me the trouble of inventing remedies. Yes; it +was indeed easy to find fault. "The world was all before me, where to +choose." In such a disorganized, anomalous, grumbling, party-embittered +element as this English society, and its twin pauperism and luxury, I had +but to look straight before me to see my prey. + +And thus I became daily more and more cynical, fierce, reckless. My mouth +was filled with cursing--and too often justly. And all the while, like +tens of thousands of my class, I had no man to teach me. Sheep scattered +on the hills, we were, that had no shepherd. What wonder if our bones lay +bleaching among rocks and quagmires, and wolves devoured the heritage of +God? + +Mackaye had nothing positive, after all, to advise or propound. His wisdom +was one of apophthegms and maxims, utterly impracticable, too often merely +negative, as was his creed, which, though he refused to be classed with any +sect, was really a somewhat undefined Unitarianism--or rather Islamism. He +could say, with the old Moslem, "God is great--who hath resisted his will?" +And he believed what he said, and lived manful and pure, reverent and +self-denying, by that belief, as the first Moslem did. But that was not +enough. + + "Not enough? Merely negative?" + +No--_that_ was positive enough, and mighty; but I repeat it, it was not +enough. He felt it so himself; for he grew daily more and more cynical, +more and more hopeless about the prospects of his class and of all +humanity. Why not? Poor suffering wretches! what is it to them to know that +"God is great," unless you can prove to them God is also merciful? Did he +indeed care for men at all?--was what I longed to know; was all this misery +and misrule around us his will--his stern and necessary law--his lazy +connivance? And were we to free ourselves from it by any frantic means that +came to hand? or had he ever interfered himself? Was there a chance, a +hope, of his interfering now, in our own time, to take the matter into his +own hand, and come out of his place to judge the earth in righteousness? +That was what we wanted to know; and poor Mackaye could give no comfort +there. "God was great--the wicked would be turned into hell." Ay--the few +wilful, triumphant wicked; but the millions of suffering, starving wicked, +the victims of society and circumstance--what hope for them? "God was +great." And for the clergy, our professed and salaried teachers, all I can +say is--and there are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of workmen who +can re-echo my words--with the exception of the dean and my cousin, and one +who shall be mentioned hereafter, a clergyman never spoke to me in my life. + +Why should he? Was I not a Chartist and an Infidel? The truth is, the +clergy are afraid of us. To read the _Dispatch_, is to be excommunicated. +Young men's classes? Honour to them, however few they are--however hampered +by the restrictions of religious bigotry and political cowardice. But the +working men, whether rightly or wrongly, do not trust them; they do not +trust the clergy who set them on foot; they do not expect to be taught at +them the things they long to know--to be taught the whole truth in them +about history, politics, science, the Bible. They suspect them to be mere +tubs to the whale--mere substitutes for education, slowly and late adopted, +in order to stop the mouths of the importunate. They may misjudge the +clergy; but whose fault is it if they do? Clergymen of England!--look at +the history of your Establishment for the last fifty years, and say, what +wonder is it if the artisan mistrust you? Every spiritual reform, since the +time of John Wesley, has had to establish itself in the teeth of insult, +calumny, and persecution. Every ecclesiastical reform comes not from +within, but from without your body. Mr. Horsman, struggling against every +kind of temporizing and trickery, has to do the work which bishops, by +virtue of their seat in the House of Lords, ought to have been doing years +ago. Everywhere we see the clergy, with a few persecuted exceptions (like +Dr. Arnold), proclaiming themselves the advocates of Toryism, the dogged +opponents of our political liberty, living either by the accursed system of +pew-rents, or else by one which depends on the high price of corn; chosen +exclusively from the classes who crush us down; prohibiting all free +discussion on religious points; commanding us to swallow down, with faith +as passive and implicit as that of a Papist, the very creeds from which +their own bad example, and their scandalous neglect, have, in the last +three generations, alienated us; never mixing with the thoughtful working +men, except in the prison, the hospital, or in extreme old age; betraying, +in every tract, in every sermon, an ignorance of the doubts, the feelings, +the very language of the masses, which would be ludicrous, were it not +accursed before God and man. And then will you show us a few tardy +improvements here and there, and ask us, indignantly, why we distrust you? +Oh! gentlemen, if you cannot see for yourselves the causes of our distrust, +it is past our power to show you. We must leave it to God. + + * * * * * + +But to return to my own story. I had, as I said before, to live by my pen; +and in that painful, confused, maimed way, I contrived to scramble on the +long winter through, writing regularly for the _Weekly Warwhoop_, and +sometimes getting an occasional scrap into some other cheap periodical, +often on the very verge of starvation, and glad of a handful of meal from +Sandy's widow's barrel. If I had had more than my share of feasting in the +summer, I made the balance even, during those frosty months, by many a +bitter fast. + +And here let me ask you, gentle reader, who are just now considering me +ungentle, virulent, and noisy, did you ever, for one day in your whole +life, literally, involuntarily, and in spite of all your endeavours, +longings, and hungerings, _not get enough to eat_? If you ever have, it +must have taught you several things. + +But all this while, it must not be supposed that I had forgotten my +promise to good Farmer Porter, to look for his missing son. And, indeed, +Crossthwaite and I were already engaged in a similar search for a friend +of his--the young tailor, who, as I told Porter, had been lost for +several months. He was the brother of Crossthwaite's wife, a passionate, +kind-hearted Irishman, Mike Kelly by name, reckless and scatter-brained +enough to get himself into every possible scrape, and weak enough of will +never to get himself out of one. For these two, Crossthwaite and I had +searched from one sweater's den to another, and searched in vain. And +though the present interest and exertion kept us both from brooding over +our own difficulties, yet in the long run it tended only to embitter and +infuriate our minds. The frightful scenes of hopeless misery which we +witnessed--the ever widening pit of pauperism and slavery, gaping for fresh +victims day by day, as they dropped out of the fast lessening "honourable +trade," into the ever-increasing miseries of sweating, piece-work, and +starvation prices; the horrible certainty that the same process which was +devouring our trade was slowly, but surely, eating up every other also; +the knowledge that there was no remedy, no salvation for us in man, that +political economists had declared such to be the law and constitution of +society, and that our rulers had believed that message, and were determined +to act upon it;--if all these things did not go far towards maddening us, +we must have been made of sterner stuff than any one who reads this book. + +At last, about the middle of January, just as we had given up the search +as hopeless, and poor Katie's eyes were getting red and swelled with daily +weeping, a fresh spur was given to our exertions, by the sudden appearance +of no less a person than the farmer himself. What ensued upon his coming +must be kept for another chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +THE SWEATER'S DEN. + + +I was greedily devouring Lane's "Arabian Nights," which had made their +first appearance in the shop that day. + +Mackaye sat in his usual place, smoking a clean pipe, and assisting his +meditations by certain mysterious chironomic signs; while opposite to him +was Farmer Porter--a stone or two thinner than when I had seen him last, +but one stone is not much missed out of seventeen. His forehead looked +smaller, and his jaws larger than ever, and his red face was sad, and +furrowed with care. + +Evidently, too, he was ill at ease about other matters besides his son. He +was looking out of the corners of his eyes, first at the skinless cast on +the chimney-piece, then at the crucified books hanging over his head, as +if he considered them not altogether safe companions, and rather expected +something "uncanny" to lay hold of him from behind--a process which +involved the most horrible contortions of visage, as he carefully abstained +from stirring a muscle of his neck or body, but sat bolt upright, his +elbows pinned to his sides, and his knees as close together as his stomach +would permit, like a huge corpulent Egyptian Memnon--the most ludicrous +contrast to the little old man opposite, twisted up together in his +Joseph's coat, like some wizard magician in the stories which I was +reading. A curious pair of "poles" the two made; the mesothet whereof, by +no means a _"punctum indifferens,"_ but a true connecting spiritual idea, +stood on the table--in the whisky-bottle. + +Farmer Porter was evidently big with some great thought, and had all a true +poet's bashfulness about publishing the fruit of his creative genius. He +looked round again at the skinless man, the caricatures, the books; and, +as his eye wandered from pile to pile, and shelf to shelf, his face +brightened, and he seemed to gain courage. + +Solemnly he put his hat on his knees, and began solemnly brushing it with +his cuff. Then he saw me watching him, and stopped. Then he put his pipe +solemnly on the hob, and cleared his throat for action, while I buried my +face in the book. + +"Them's a sight o' larned beuks, Muster Mackaye?" + +"Humph!" + +"Yow maun ha' got a deal o' scholarship among they, noo?" + +"Humph!" + +"Dee yow think, noo, yow could find out my boy out of un, by any ways o' +conjuring like?" + +"By what?" + +"Conjuring--to strike a perpendicular, noo, or say the Lord's Prayer +backwards?" + +"Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa?" asked Sandy, after a long pull at the +whisky-toddy. + +"Or a few efreets?" added I. + +"Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure," answered +Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice. + +"Aweel--I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna +haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, +I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain +all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric +method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the +interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; +an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that +to puir barbarous folk--signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe +in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks +might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal +times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor +coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this. +Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes--but no +that o' stolen tailors." + +Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue, with mouth and eyes gradually +expanding between awe and the desire to comprehend; but at the last +sentence his countenance fell. + +"So I'm thinking, Mister Porter, that the best witch in siccan a case is +ane that ye may find at the police-office." + +"Anan?" + +"Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny in their way: an' I +just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha' a crack wi' ane o' 'em. An noo, +gin ye're inclined, we'll leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave +o' Trophawnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir for tidings o' the +twa lost sheep." + +So to Bow-street we went, and found our man, to whom the farmer bowed with +obsequiousness most unlike his usual burly independence. He evidently half +suspected him to have dealings with the world of spirits: but whether he +had such or not, they had been utterly unsuccessful; and we walked back +again, with the farmer between us, half-blubbering-- + +"I tell ye, there's nothing like ganging to a wise 'ooman. Bless ye, I mind +one up to Guy Hall, when I was a barn, that two Irish reapers coom down, +and murthered her for the money--and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so +sure as the church--and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains +coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it--and when my vather's cows +was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together +at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got +nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil +carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both a-hanging in +chains by Wisbeach river, with my own eyes. So when they Irish reapers +comes into the vens, our chaps always says, 'Yow goo to Guy Hall, there's +yor brithren a-waitin' for yow,' and that do make um joost mad loike, it +do. I tell ye there's nowt like a wise 'ooman, for vinding out the likes o' +this." + +At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them to go to the Magazine +office. As I passed through Covent Garden, a pretty young woman stopped me +under a gas-lamp. I was pushing on when I saw it was Jemmy Downes's Irish +wife, and saw, too, that she did not recognise me. A sudden instinct made +me stop and hear what she had to say. + +"Shure, thin, and ye're a tailor, my young man?" + +"Yes," I said, nettled a little that my late loathed profession still +betrayed itself in my gait. + +"From the counthry?" + +I nodded, though I dared not speak a white lie to that effect. I fancied +that, somehow, through her I might hear of poor Kelly and his friend +Porter. + +"Ye'll be wanting work, thin?" + +"I have no work." + +"Och, thin, it's I can show ye the flower o' work, I can. Bedad, there's a +shop I know of where ye'll earn--bedad, if ye're the ninth part of a man, +let alone a handy young fellow like the looks of you--och, ye'll earn +thirty shillings the week, to the very least--an' beautiful lodgings; +och, thin, just come and see 'em--as chape as mother's milk! Gome along, +thin--och, it's the beauty ye are--just the nate figure for a tailor." + +The fancy still possessed me; and I went with her through one dingy back +street after another. She seemed to be purposely taking an indirect road, +to mislead me as to my whereabouts; but after a half-hour's walking, +I knew, as well as she, that we were in one of the most miserable +slop-working nests of the East-end. + +She stopped at a house door, and hurried me in, up to the first floor, +and into a dirty, slatternly parlour, smelling infamously of gin; where +the first object I beheld was Jemmy Downes, sitting before the fire, +three-parts drunk, with a couple of dirty, squalling children on the +hearthrug, whom he was kicking and cuffing alternately. + +"Och, thin, ye villain, beating the poor darlints whinever I lave ye a +minute." And pouring out a volley of Irish curses, she caught up the +urchins, one under each arm, and kissed and hugged them till they were +nearly choked. "Och, ye plague o' my life--as drunk as a baste; an' I +brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in the business." + +Downes got up, and steadying himself by the table, leered at me with +lacklustre eyes, and attempted a little ceremonious politeness. How this +was to end I did not see; but I was determined to carry it through, on the +chance of success, infinitely small as that might be. + +"An' I've told him thirty shillings a week's the least he'll earn; and +charge for board and lodgings only seven shillings." + +"Thirty!--she lies; she's always a lying; don't you mind her. +Five-and-forty is the werry lowest figure. Ask my respectable and most +piousest partner, Shemei Solomons. Why, blow me--it's Locke!" + +"Yes, it is Locke; and surely you're my old friend Jemmy Downes? Shake +hands. What an unexpected pleasure to meet you again!" + +"Werry unexpected pleasure. Tip us your daddle! Delighted--delighted, as I +was a saying, to be of the least use to yer. Take a caulker? Summat heavy, +then? No? 'Tak' a drap o' kindness yet, for auld langsyne?" + +"You forget I was always a teetotaller." + +"Ay," with a look of unfeigned pity. "An' you're a going to lend us a hand? +Oh, ah! perhaps you'd like to begin? Here's a most beautiful uniform, +now, for a markis in her Majesty's Guards; we don't mention names--tarn't +businesslike. P'r'aps you'd like best to work here to-night, for +company--'for auld langsyne, my boys;' and I'll introduce yer to the gents +up-stairs to-morrow." + +"No," I said; "I'll go up at once, if you've no objection." + +"Och, thin, but the sheets isn't aired--no--faix; and I'm thinking the +gentleman as is a going isn't gone yet." + +But I insisted on going up at once; and, grumbling, she followed me. I +stopped on the landing of the second floor, and asked which way; and seeing +her in no hurry to answer, opened a door, inside which I heard the hum +of many voices, saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster, that I +supposed that was the workroom. + +As I had expected, a fetid, choking den, with just room enough in it for +the seven or eight sallow, starved beings, who, coatless, shoeless, and +ragged, sat stitching, each on his truckle-bed. I glanced round; the man +whom I sought was not there. + +My heart fell; why it had ever risen to such a pitch of hope I cannot tell; +and half-cursing myself for a fool, in thus wildly thrusting my head into a +squabble, I turned back and shut the door, saying-- + +"A very pleasant room, ma'am, but a leetle too crowded." + +Before she could answer, the opposite door opened; and a face +appeared--unwashed, unshaven, shrunken to a skeleton. I did not recognise +it at first. + +"Blessed Vargen! but that wasn't your voice, Locke?" + +"And who are you?" + +"Tear and ages! and he don't know Mike Kelly!" + +My first impulse was to catch him up in my arms, and run down-stairs with +him. I controlled myself, however, not knowing how far he might be in his +tyrant's power. But his voluble Irish heart burst out at once-- + +"Oh! blessed saints, take me out o' this! take me out for the love of +Jesus! take me out o' this hell, or I'll go mad intirely! Och! will nobody +have pity on poor sowls in purgatory--here in prison like negur slaves? +We're starved to the bone, we are, and kilt intirely with cowld." + +And as he clutched my arm, with his long, skinny, trembling fingers, I +saw that his hands and feet were all chapped and bleeding. Neither shoe +nor stocking did he possess; his only garments were a ragged shirt and +trousers; and--and, and in horrible mockery of his own misery, a grand +new flowered satin vest, which to-morrow was to figure in some gorgeous +shop-window! + +"Och! Mother of Heaven!" he went on, wildly, "when will I get out to the +fresh air? For five months I haven't seen the blessed light of sun, nor +spoken to the praste, nor ate a bit o' mate, barring bread-and-butter. +Shure, it's all the blessed Sabbaths and saints' days I've been a working +like a haythen Jew, an niver seen the insides o' the chapel to confess my +sins, and me poor sowl's lost intirely--and they've pawned the relaver +[Footnote: A coat, we understand, which is kept by the coatless wretches in +these sweaters' dungeons, to be used by each of them in turn when they want +to go out.--EDITOR.] this fifteen weeks, and not a boy of us iver sot foot +in the street since." + +"Vot's that row?" roared at this juncture Downes's voice from below. + +"Och, thin," shrieked the woman, "here's that thief o' the warld, Micky +Kelly, slandhering o' us afore the blessed heaven, and he owing L2. 14s. +1/2d. for his board an' lodging, let alone pawn-tickets, and goin' to +rin away, the black-hearted ongrateful sarpent!" And she began yelling +indiscriminately, "Thieves!" "Murder!" "Blasphemy!" and such other +ejaculations, which (the English ones at least) had not the slightest +reference to the matter in hand. + +"I'll come to him!" said Downes, with an oath, and rushed stumbling up +the stairs, while the poor wretch sneaked in again, and slammed the door +to. Downes battered at it, but was met with a volley of curses from the +men inside; while, profiting by the Babel, I blew out the light, ran +down-stairs, and got safe into the street. + +In two hours afterwards, Mackaye, Porter, Crossthwaite, and I were at the +door, accompanied by a policeman, and a search-warrant. Porter had insisted +on accompanying us. He had made up his mind that his son was at Downes's; +and all representations of the smallness of his chance were fruitless. He +worked himself up into a state of complete frenzy, and flourished a huge +stick in a way which shocked the policeman's orderly and legal notions. + +"That may do very well down in your country, sir; but you arn't a goin' to +use that there weapon here, you know, not by no hact o' Parliament as I +knows on." + +"Ow, it's joost a way I ha' wi' me." And the stick was quiet for fifty +yards or so, and then recommenced smashing imaginary skulls. + +"You'll do somebody a mischief, sir, with that. You'd much better a lend it +me." + +Porter tucked it under his arm for fifty yards more; and so on, till we +reached Downes's house. + +The policeman knocked: and the door was opened, cautiously, by an old Jew, +of a most un-"Caucasian" cast of features, however "high-nosed," as Mr. +Disraeli has it. + +The policeman asked to see Michael Kelly. + +"Michaelsh? I do't know such namesh--" But before the parley could go +farther, the farmer burst past policeman and Jew, and rushed into the +passage, roaring, in a voice which made the very windows rattle, + +"Billy Poorter! Billy Poorter! whor be yow? whor be yow?" + +We all followed him up-stairs, in time to see him charging valiantly, +with his stick for a bayonet, the small person of a Jew-boy, who stood +at the head of the stairs in a scientific attitude. The young rascal +planted a dozen blows in the huge carcase--he might as well have thumped +the rhinoceros in the Regent's Park; the old man ran right over him, +without stopping, and dashed up the stairs; at the head of which--oh, +joy!--appeared a long, shrunken, red-haired figure, the tears on its dirty +cheeks glittering in the candle-glare. In an instant father and son were in +each other's arms. + +"Oh, my barn! my barn! my barn! my barn!" And then the old Hercules held +him off at arm's length, and looked at him with a wistful face, and hugged +him again with "My barn! my barn!" He had nothing else to say. Was it not +enough? And poor Kelly danced frantically around them, hurrahing; his own +sorrows forgotten in his friend's deliverance. + +The Jew-boy shook himself, turned, and darted down stairs past us; the +policeman quietly put out his foot, tripped him headlong, and jumping down +after him, extracted from his grasp a heavy pocket-book. + +"Ah! my dear mothersh's dying gift! Oh, dear! oh dear! give it back to a +poor orphansh!" + +"Didn't I see you take it out o' the old un's pocket, you young villain?" +answered the maintainer of order, as he shoved the book into his bosom, and +stood with one foot on his writhing victim, a complete nineteenth-century +St. Michael. + +"Let me hold him," I said, "while you go up-stairs." + +"_You_ hold a Jew-boy!--you hold a mad cat!" answered the policeman, +contemptuously--and with justice--for at that moment Downes appeared on the +first-floor landing, cursing and blaspheming. + +"He's my 'prentice! he's my servant! I've got a bond, with his own hand to +it, to serve me for three years. I'll have the law of you--I will!" + +Then the meaning of the big stick came out. The old man leapt down the +stairs, and seized Downes. "You're the tyrant as has locked my barn up +here!" And a thrashing commenced, which it made my bones ache only to look +at. Downes had no chance; the old man felled him on his face in a couple of +blows, and taking both hands to his stick, hewed away at him as if he had +been a log. + +"I waint hit a's head! I waint hit a's head!"--whack, whack. "Let me +be!"--whack, whack-puff. "It does me gude, it does me gude!"--puff, +puff, puff--whack. "I've been a bottling of it up for three years, come +Whitsuntide!"--whack, whack, whack--while Mackaye and Crossthwaite stood +coolly looking on, and the wife shut herself up in the side-room, and +screamed "Murder!" + +The unhappy policeman stood at his wits' end, between the prisoner below +and the breach of the peace above, bellowing in vain, in the Queen's name, +to us, and to the grinning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's +life seemed in danger, he wavered; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jumped +up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and +Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in passing, which I felt for a week +after, and vanished through the street-door, which he locked after him. + +"Very well!" said the functionary, rising solemnly, and pulling out a +note-book--"Scar under left eye, nose a little twisted to the right, bad +chilblains on the hands. You'll keep till next time, young man. Now, +you fat gentleman up there, have you done a qualifying of yourself for +Newgate?" + +The old man had ran up-stairs again, and was hugging his son; but when the +policeman lifted Downes, he rushed back to his victim, and begged, like a +great school-boy, for leave to "bet him joost won bit moor." + +"Let me bet un! I'll pay un!--I'll pay all as my son owes un! Marcy me! +where's my pooss?" And so on raged the Babel, till we got the two poor +fellows safe out of the house. We had to break open the door to do it, +thanks to that imp of Israel. + +"For God's sake, take us too!" almost screamed five or six other voices. + +"They're all in debt--every onesh; they sha'n't go till they paysh, if +there's law in England," whined the old Jew, who had re-appeared. + +"I'll pay for 'em--I'll pay every farden, if so be as they treated my boy +well. Here, you, Mr. Locke, there's the ten pounds as I promised you. Why, +whor is my pooss?" + +The policeman solemnly handed it to him. He took it, turned it over, +looked at the policeman half frightened, and pointed with his fat thumb at +Mackaye. + +"Well, he said as you was a conjuror--and sure he was right." + +He paid me the money. I had no mind to keep it in such company; so I got +the poor fellows' pawn-tickets, and Crossthwaite and I took the things +out for them. When we returned, we found them in a group in the passage, +holding the door open, in their fear lest we should be locked up, or +entrapped in some way. Their spirits seemed utterly broken. Some three or +four went off to lodge where they could; the majority went upstairs again +to work. That, even that dungeon, was their only home--their only hope--as +it is of thousands of "free" Englishmen at this moment. + +We returned, and found the old man with his new-found prodigal sitting on +his knee, as if he had been a baby. Sandy told me afterwards, that he had +scarcely kept him from carrying the young man all the way home; he was +convinced that the poor fellow was dying of starvation. I think really +he was not far wrong. In the corner sat Kelly, crouched together like a +baboon, blubbering, hurrahing, invoking the saints, cursing the sweaters, +and blessing the present company. We were afraid, for several days, that +his wits were seriously affected. + +And, in his old arm-chair, pipe in mouth, sat good Sandy Mackaye, wiping +his eyes with the many-coloured sleeve, and moralizing to himself, _sotto +voce_: + +"The auld Romans made slaves o' their debitors; sae did the Anglo-Saxons, +for a' good Major Cartwright has writ to the contrary. But I didna ken +the same Christian practice was part o' the Breetish constitution. Aweel, +aweel--atween Riot Acts, Government by Commissions, and ither little +extravagants and codicils o' Mammon's making, it's no that easy to ken, +the day, what is the Breetish constitution, and what isn't. Tak a drappie, +Billy Porter, lad?" + +"Never again so long as I live. I've learnt a lesson and a half about that, +these last few months." + +"Aweel, moderation's best, but abstinence better than naething. Nae man +shall deprive me o' my leeberty, but I'll tempt nae man to gie up his." And +he actually put the whisky-bottle by into the cupboard. + +The old man and his son went home next day, promising me, if I would but +come to see them, "twa hundert acres o' the best partridge-shooting, and +wild dooks as plenty as sparrows; and to live in clover till I bust, if I +liked." And so, as Bunyan has it, they went on their way, and I saw them no +more. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +AN EMERSONIAN SERMON. + + +Certainly, if John Crossthwaite held the victim-of-circumstance doctrine +in theory, he did not allow Mike Kelly to plead it in practice, as +an extenuation of his misdeeds. Very different from his Owenite +"it's-nobody's-fault" harangues in the debating society, or his admiration +for the teacher of whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly, was his +lecture that evening to the poor Irishmen on "It's all your own fault." +Unhappy Kelly! he sat there like a beaten cur, looking first at one +of us, and then at the other, for mercy, and finding none. As soon +as Crossthwaite's tongue was tired, Mackaye's began, on the sins of +drunkenness, hastiness, improvidence, over-trustfulness, &c., &c., and, +above all, on the cardinal offence of not having signed the protest years +before, and spurned the dishonourable trade, as we had done. Even his most +potent excuse that "a boy must live somehow," Crossthwaite treated as +contemptuously as if he had been a very Leonidas, while Mackaye chimed in +with-- + +"An' ye a Papist! ye talk o' praying to saints an' martyrs, that died in +torments because they wad na do what they should na do? What ha' ye to +do wi' martyrs?--a meeserable wretch that sells his soul for a mess o' +pottage--four slices per diem o' thin bread-and-butter? Et propter veetam +veevendi perdere causas! Dinna tell me o' your hardships--ye've had your +deserts--your rights were just equivalent to your mights, an' so ye got +them." + +"Faix, thin, Misther Mackaye, darlint, an' whin did I desarve to pawn me +own goose an' board, an' sit looking at the spidhers for the want o' them?" + +"Pawn his ain goose! Pawn himsel! pawn his needle--gin it had been worth +the pawning, they'd ha' ta'en it. An' yet there's a command in Deuteronomy, +Ye shall na tak the millstone in pledge, for it's a man's life; nor yet +keep his raiment ower night, but gie it the puir body back, that he may +sleep in his ain claes, an' bless ye. O--but pawnbrokers dinna care for +blessings--na marketable value in them, whatsoever." + +"And the shopkeeper," said I, "in 'the Arabian Nights,' refuses to take the +fisherman's net in pledge, because he gets his living thereby." + +"Ech! but, laddie, they were puir legal Jews, under carnal ordinances, an' +daur na even tak an honest five per cent interest for their money. An' the +baker o' Bagdad, why he was a benighted heathen, ye ken, an' deceivit by +that fause prophet, Mahomet, to his eternal damnation, or he wad never ha' +gone aboot to fancy a fisherman was his brither." + +"Faix, an' ain't we all brothers?" asked Kelly. + +"Ay, and no," said Sandy, with an expression which would have been a smile, +but for its depths of bitter earnestness; "brethren in Christ, my laddie." + +"An' ain't that all over the same?" + +"Ask the preachers. Gin they meant brothers, they'd say brothers, be sure; +but because they don't mean brothers at a', they say brethren--ye'll mind, +brethren--to soun' antiquate, an' professional, an' perfunctory-like, for +fear it should be ower real, an' practical, an' startling, an' a' that; +and then jist limit it down wi' a' in Christ,' for fear o' owre wide +applications, and a' that. But + + "For a' that, and a' that. + It's comin' yet, for a' that, + When man an' man, the warld owre, + Shall brothers be, for a' that-- + +"An' na brithren any mair at a'!" + +"An' didn't the blessed Jesus die for all?" + +"What? for heretics, Micky?" + +"Bedad, thin, an' I forgot that intirely!" + +"Of course you did! It's strange, laddie," said he, turning to me, "that +that Name suld be everywhere, fra the thunderers o' Exeter Ha' to this +puir, feckless Paddy, the watchword o' exclusiveness. I'm thinking ye'll no +find the workmen believe in't, till somebody can fin' the plan o' making it +the sign o' universal comprehension. Gin I had na seen in my youth that a +brither in Christ meant less a thousand-fold than a brither out o' him, I +might ha' believit the noo--we'll no say what. I've an owre great organ o' +marvellousness, an' o' veneration too, I'm afeard." + +"Ah!" said Crossthwaite, "you should come and hear Mr. Windrush to-night, +about the all-embracing benevolence of the Deity, and the abomination of +limiting it by all those narrow creeds and dogmas." + +"An' wha's Meester Windrush, then?" + +"Oh, he's an American; he was a Calvinist preacher originally, I believe; +but, as he told us last Sunday evening, he soon cast away the worn-out +vestures of an obsolete faith, which were fast becoming only crippling +fetters." + +"An' ran oot sarkless on the public, eh? I'm afeard there's mony a man else +that throws awa' the gude auld plaid o' Scots Puritanism, an' is unco fain +to cover his nakedness wi' ony cast popinjay's feathers he can forgather +wi'. Aweel, aweel--a puir priestless age it is, the noo. We'll e'en gang +hear him the nicht, Alton, laddie; ye ha' na darkened the kirk door this +mony a day--nor I neither, mair by token." + +It was too true. I had utterly given up the whole problem of religion as +insoluble. I believed in poetry, science, and democracy--and they were +enough for me then; enough, at least, to leave a mighty hunger in my heart, +I knew not for what. And as for Mackaye, though brought up, as he told me, +a rigid Scotch Presbyterian, he had gradually ceased to attend the church +of his fathers. + +"It was no the kirk o' his fathers--the auld God--trusting kirk that +Clavers dragoonit down by burns and muirsides. It was a' gane dead an' dry; +a piece of Auld-Bailey barristration anent soul-saving dodges. What did he +want wi' proofs o' the being o' God, an' o' the doctrine o' original sin? +He could see eneugh o' them ayont the shop-door, ony tide. They made puir +Rabbie Burns an anything-arian, wi' their blethers, an' he was near gaun +the same gate." + +And, besides, he absolutely refused to enter any place of worship where +there were pews. "He wadna follow after a multitude to do evil; he wad na +gang before his Maker wi' a lee in his right hand. Nae wonder folks were so +afraid o' the names o' equality an' britherhood, when they'd kicked them +out e'en o' the kirk o' God. Pious folks may ca' me a sinfu' auld Atheist. +They winna gang to a harmless stage play--an' richt they--for fear o' +countenancing the sin that's dune there, an' I winna gang to the kirk, for +fear o' countenancing the sin that's dune there, by putting down my hurdies +on that stool o' antichrist, a haspit pew!" + +I was, therefore, altogether surprised at the promptitude with which he +agreed to go and hear Crossthwaite's new-found prophet. His reasons for so +doing may be, I think, gathered from the conversation towards the end of +this chapter. + +Well, we went; and I, for my part, was charmed with Mr. Windrush's +eloquence. His style, which was altogether Emersonian, quite astonished me +by its alternate bursts of what I considered brilliant declamation, and +of forcible epigrammatic antithesis. I do not deny that I was a little +startled by some of his doctrines, and suspected that he had not seen much, +either of St. Giles's cellars or tailors' workshops either, when he talked +of sin as "only a lower form of good. Nothing," he informed us, "was +produced in nature without pain and disturbance; and what we had been +taught to call sin was, in fact, nothing but the birth-throes attendant on +the progress of the species.--As for the devil, Novalis, indeed, had gone +so far as to suspect him to be a necessary illusion. Novalis was a mystic, +and tainted by the old creeds. The illusion was not necessary--it was +disappearing before the fast-approaching meridian light of philosophic +religion. Like the myths of Christianity, it had grown up in an age of +superstition, when men, blind to the wondrous order of the universe, +believed that supernatural beings, like the Homeric gods, actually +interfered in the affairs of mortals. Science had revealed the +irrevocability of the laws of nature--was man alone to be exempt from them? +No. The time would come when it would be as obsolete an absurdity to talk +of the temptation of a fiend, as it was now to talk of the wehrwolf, or +the angel of the thunder-cloud. The metaphor might remain, doubtless, +as a metaphor, in the domain of poetry, whose office was to realize, +in objective symbols, the subjective ideas of the human intellect; but +philosophy, and the pure sentiment of religion, which found all things, +even God himself, in the recesses of its own enthusiastic heart, must +abjure such a notion." + + * * * * * + +"What!" he asked again, "shall all nature be a harmonious whole, +reflecting, in every drop of dew which gems the footsteps of the morning, +the infinite love and wisdom of its Maker, and man alone be excluded +from his part in that concordant choir? Yet such is the doctrine of the +advocates of free-will, and of sin--its phantom-bantling. Man disobey his +Maker! disarrange and break the golden wheels and springs of the infinite +machine! The thought were blasphemy!--impossibility! All things fulfil +their destiny; and so does man, in a higher or lower sphere of being. Shall +I punish the robber? Shall I curse the profligate? As soon destroy the +toad, because my partial taste may judge him ugly; or doom to hell, for +his carnivorous appetite, the muscanonge of my native lakes! Toad is not +horrible to toad, or thief to thief. Philanthropists or statesmen may +environ him with more genial circumstances, and so enable his propensities +to work more directly for the good of society; but to punish him--to punish +nature for daring to be nature!--Never! I may thank the Upper Destinies +that they have not made me as other men are--that they have endowed me with +nobler instincts, a more delicate conformation than the thief; but I have +my part to play, and he has his. Why should we wish to be other than the +All-wise has made us?" + +"Fine doctrine that," grumbled Sandy; "gin ye've first made up your mind +wi' the Pharisee, that ye _are_ no like ither men." + +"Shall I pray, then? For what? I will coax none, natter none--not even the +Supreme! I will not be absurd enough to wish to change that order, by which +sun and stars, saints and sinners, alike fulfil their destinies. There is +one comfort, my friends; coax and flatter as we will, he will not hear us." + +"Pleasant, for puir deevils like us!" quoth Mackaye. + +"What then remains? Thanks, thanks--not of words, but of actions. Worship +is a life, not a ceremony. He who would honour the Supreme, let him +cheerfully succumb to the destiny which the Supreme has allotted, and, +like the shell or the flower--('Or the pickpocket,' added Mackaye, +almost audibly)--become the happy puppet of the universal impulse. He +who would honour Christ, let him become a Christ himself! Theodore of +Mopsuestia--born, alas! before his time--a prophet for whom as yet no +audience stood ready in the amphitheatre of souls--'Christ!' he was wont +to say; 'I can become Christ myself, if I will.' Become thou Christ, my +brother! He has an idea--the idea of utter submission--abnegation of his +own fancied will before the supreme necessities. Fulfil that idea, and thou +art he! Deny thyself, and then only wilt thou be a reality; for thou hast +no self. If thou hadst a self, thou wouldst but lie in denying it--and +would The Being thank thee for denying what he had given thee? But thou +hast none! God is circumstance, and thou his creature! Be content! Fear +not, strive not, change not, repent not! Thou art nothing! Be nothing, and +thou becomest a part of all things!" + +And so Mr. Windrush ended his discourse, which Crossthwaite had been all +the while busily taking down in short-hand, for the edification of the +readers of a certain periodical, and also for those of this my Life. + +I plead guilty to having been entirely carried away by what I heard. There +was so much which was true, so much more which seemed true, so much which +it would have been convenient to believe true, and all put so eloquently +and originally, as I then considered, that, in short, I was in raptures, +and so was poor dear Crossthwaite; and as we walked home, we dinned Mr. +Windrush's praises one into each of Mackaye's ears. The old man, however, +paced on silent and meditative. At last-- + +"A hunder sects or so in the land o' Gret Britain; an' a hunder or so +single preachers, each man a sect of his ain! an' this the last fashion! +Last, indeed! The moon of Calvinism's far gone in the fourth quarter, +when it's come to the like o' that. Truly, the soul-saving business is +a'thegither fa'n to a low ebb, as Master Tummas says somewhere!" + +"Well, but," asked Crossthwaite, "was not that man, at least, splendid?" + +"An' hoo much o' thae gran' objectives an' subjectives did ye comprehen', +then, Johnnie, my man?" + +"Quite enough for me," answered John, in a somewhat nettled tone. + +"An' sae did I." + +"But you ought to hear him often. You can't judge of his system from one +sermon, in this way." + +"Seestem! and what's that like?" + +"Why, he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties, on the one broad +fundamental ground of the unity of God as revealed by science--" + +"Verra like uniting o' men by just pu'ing aff their claes, and telling 'em, +'There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the one broad fundamental principle o' +want o' breeks.'" + +"Of course," went on Crossthwaite, without taking notice of this +interruption, "he allows full liberty of conscience. All he wishes for is +the emancipation of intellect. He will allow every one, he says, to realize +that idea to himself, by the representations which suit him best." + +"An' so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry, gin a man finds +it good to tickle up his soul?" + +"Ay, he did speak of that--what did he call it? Oh! 'one of the ways in +which the Christian idea naturally embodied itself in imaginative minds!' +but the higher intellects, of course, would want fewer helps of that kind. +'They would see'--ay, that was it--'the pure white light of truth, without +requiring those coloured refracting media.'" + +"That wad depend muckle on whether the light o' truth chose or not, I'm +thinking. But, Johnnie, lad--guide us and save us!--whaur got ye a' these +gran' outlandish words the nicht?" + +"Haven't I been taking down every one of these lectures for the press?" + +"The press gang to the father o't--and you too, for lending your han' in +the matter--for a mair accursed aristocrat I never heerd, sin' I first ate +haggis. Oh, ye gowk--ye gowk! Dinna ye see what be the upshot o' siccan +doctrin'? That every puir fellow as has no gret brains in his head will +be left to his superstition, an' his ignorance to fulfil the lusts o' his +flesh; while the few that are geniuses, or fancy themselves sae, are to +ha' the monopoly o' this private still o' philosophy--these carbonari, +illuminati, vehmgericht, samothracian mysteries o' bottled moonshine. An' +when that comes to pass, I'll just gang back to my schule and my catechism, +and begin again wi' 'who was born o' the Virgin Mary, suffered oonder +Pontius Pilate!' Hech! lads, there's no subjectives and objectives there, +na beggarly, windy abstractions, but joost a plain fact, that God cam' down +to look for puir bodies, instead o' leaving puir bodies to gang looking for +Him. An' here's a pretty place to be left looking for Him in--between gin +shops and gutters! A pretty Gospel for the publicans an' harlots, to tell +'em that if their bairns are canny eneugh, they may possibly some day be +allowed to believe that there is one God, and not twa! And then, by way of +practical application--'Hech! my dear, starving, simple brothers, ye manna +be sae owre conscientious, and gang fashing yourselves anent being brutes +an' deevils, for the gude God's made ye sae, and He's verra weel content to +see you sae, gin ye be content or no.'" + +"Then, do you believe in the old doctrines of Christianity?" I asked. + +"Dinna speir what I believe in. I canna tell ye. I've been seventy years +trying to believe in God, and to meet anither man that believed in him. So +I'm just like the Quaker o' the town o' Redcross, that met by himself every +First-day in his ain hoose." + +"Well, but," I asked again, "is not complete freedom of thought a glorious +aim--to emancipate man's noblest part--the intellect--from the trammels of +custom and ignorance?" + +"Intellect--intellect!" rejoined he, according to his fashion, catching one +up at a word, and playing on that in order to answer, not what one said, +but what one's words led to. "I'm sick o' all the talk anent intellect I +hear noo. An' what's the use o' intellect? 'Aristocracy o' intellect,' +they cry. Curse a' aristocracies--intellectual anes, as well as anes o' +birth, or rank, or money! What! will I ca' a man my superior, because +he's cleverer than mysel?--will I boo down to a bit o' brains, ony mair +than to a stock or a stane? Let a man prove himsel' better than me, my +laddie--honester, humbler, kinder, wi' mair sense o' the duty o' man, an' +the weakness o' man--and that man I'll acknowledge--that man's my king, my +leader, though he war as stupid as Eppe Dalgleish, that could na count five +on her fingers, and yet keepit her drucken father by her ain hands' labour +for twenty-three yeers." + +We could not agree to all this, but we made a rule of never contradicting +the old sage in one of his excited moods, for fear of bringing on a week's +silent fit--a state which generally ended in his smoking himself into a +bilious melancholy; but I made up my mind to be henceforth a frequent +auditor of Mr. Windrush's oratory. + +"An' sae the deevil's dead!" said Sandy, half to himself, as he sat +crooning and smoking that night over the fire. "Gone at last, puir +fallow!--an' he sae little appreciated, too! Every gowk laying his ain +sins on Nickie's back, puir Nickie!--verra like that much misunderstood +politeecian, Mr. John Cade, as Charles Buller ca'd him in the Hoose o' +Commons--an' he to be dead at last! the warld'll seem quite unco without +his auld-farrant phizog on the streets. Aweel, aweel--aiblins he's but +shammin'.-- + + "When pleasant Spring came on apace, + And showers began to fa', + John Barleycorn got up again, + And sore surprised them a'. + +"At ony rate, I'd no bury him till he began smell a wee strong like. It's a +grewsome thing, is premature interment, Alton, laddie!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. + + +But all this while, my slavery to Mr. O'Flynn's party-spirit and coarseness +was becoming daily more and more intolerable--an explosion was inevitable; +and an explosion came. + +Mr. O'Flynn found out that I had been staying at Cambridge, and at a +cathedral city too; and it was quite a godsend to him to find any one who +knew a word about the institutions at which he had been railing weekly for +years. So nothing would serve him but my writing a set of articles on the +universities, as a prelude to one on the Cathedral Establishments. In +vain I pleaded the shortness of my stay there, and the smallness of my +information. + +"Och, were not abuses notorious? And couldn't I get them up out of any +Radical paper--and just put in a little of my own observations, and a +dashing personal cut or two, to spice the thing up, and give it an original +look? and if I did not choose to write that--why," with an enormous oath, +"I should write nothing." So--for I was growing weaker and weaker, and +indeed my hack-writing was breaking down my moral sense, as it does that +of most men--I complied; and burning with vexation, feeling myself almost +guilty of a breach of trust toward those from whom I had received nothing +but kindness, I scribbled off my first number and sent it to the editor--to +see it appear next week, three-parts re-written, and every fact of my own +furnishing twisted and misapplied, till the whole thing was as vulgar and +commonplace a piece of rant as ever disgraced the people's cause. And all +this, in spite of a solemn promise, confirmed by a volley of oaths, that +I "should say what I liked, and speak my whole mind, as one who had seen +things with his own eyes had a right to do." + +Furious, I set off to the editor; and not only my pride, but what literary +conscience I had left, was stirred to the bottom by seeing myself made, +whether I would or not, a blackguard and a slanderer. + +As it was ordained, Mr. O'Flynn was gone out for an hour or two; and, +unable to settle down to any work till I had fought my battle with +him fairly out, I wandered onward, towards the West End, staring into +print-shop windows, and meditating on many things. + +As it was ordained, also, I turned up Regent Street, and into Langham +Place; when, at the door of All-Souls Church, behold a crowd and a long +string of carriages arriving, and all the pomp and glory of a grand +wedding. + +I joined the crowd from mere idleness, and somehow found myself in the +first rank, just as the bride was stepping out of the carriage--it was +Miss Staunton; and the old gentleman who handed her out was no other +than the dean. They were, of course, far too deeply engaged to recognise +insignificant little me, so that I could stare as thoroughly to my heart's +content as any of the butcher-boys and nursery-maids around me. + +She was closely veiled--but not too closely to prevent my seeing her +magnificent lip and nostril curling with pride, resolve, rich tender +passion. Her glorious black-brown hair--the true "purple locks" which Homer +so often talks of--rolled down beneath her veil in great heavy ringlets; +and with her tall and rounded figure, and step as firm and queenly as +if she were going to a throne, she seemed to me the very ideal of those +magnificent Eastern Zubeydehs and Nourmahals, whom I used to dream of after +reading the "Arabian Nights." + +As they entered the doorway, almost touching me, she looked round, as if +for some one. The dean whispered something in his gentle, stately way, and +she answered by one of those looks so intense, and yet so bright, so full +of unutterable depths of meaning and emotion, that, in spite of all my +antipathy, I felt an admiration akin to awe thrill through me, and gazed +after her so intently, that Lillian--Lillian herself--was at my side, and +almost passed me before I was aware of it. + +Yes, there she was, the foremost among a bevy of fair girls, "herself the +fairest far," all April smiles and tears, golden curls, snowy rosebuds, and +hovering clouds of lace--a fairy queen;--but yet--but yet--how shallow that +hazel, eye, how empty of meaning those delicate features, compared with the +strength and intellectual richness of the face which had preceded her! + +It was too true--I had never remarked it before; but now it flashed +across me like lightning--and like lightning vanished; for Lillian's eye +caught mine, and there was the faintest spark of a smile of recognition, +and pleased surprise, and a nod. I blushed scarlet with delight; some +servant-girl or other, who stood next to me, had seen it too--quick-eyed +that women are--and was looking curiously at me. I turned, I knew not why, +in my delicious shame, and plunged through the crowd to hide I knew not +what. + +I walked on--poor fool--in an ecstasy; the whole world was transfigured +in my eyes, and virtue and wisdom beamed from every face I passed. The +omnibus-horses were racers, and the drivers--were they not my brothers of +the people? The very policemen looked sprightly and philanthropic. I shook +hands earnestly with the crossing-sweeper of the Regent Circus, gave him +my last twopence, and rushed on, like a young David, to exterminate that +Philistine O'Flynn. + +Ah well! I was a great fool, as others too have been; but yet, that little +chance-meeting did really raise me. It made me sensible that I was made +for better things than low abuse of the higher classes. It gave me courage +to speak out, and act without fear, of consequences, once at least in +that confused facing-both-ways period of my life. O woman! woman! only +true missionary of civilization and brotherhood, and gentle, forgiving +charity; is it in thy power, and perhaps in thine only, to bind up the +broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives? One real lady, who +should dare to stoop, what might she not do with us--with our sisters? If-- + +There are hundreds, answers the reader, who do stoop. Elizabeth Fry was a +lady, well-born, rich, educated, and she has many scholars. + +True, my dear readers, true--and may God bless her and her scholars. +Do you think the working men forget them? But look at St. Giles's, or +Spitalfields, or Shadwell, and say, is not the harvest plentiful, and the +labourers, alas! few? No one asserts that nothing is done; the question is, +is enough done? Does the supply of mercy meet the demand of misery? Walk +into the next court and see! + + * * * * * + +I found Mr. O'Flynn in his sanctum, busy with paste and scissors, in the +act of putting in a string of advertisements--indecent French novels, +Atheistic tracts, quack medicines, and slopsellers' puffs; and commenced +with as much dignity as I could muster: + +"What on earth do you mean, sir, by re-writing my article?" + +"What--(in the other place)--do you mean by giving me the trouble of +re-writing it? Me head's splitting now with sitting up, cutting out, and +putting in. Poker o' Moses! but ye'd given it an intirely aristocratic +tendency. What did ye mane" (and three or four oaths rattled out) "by +talking about the pious intentions of the original founders, and the +democratic tendencies of monastic establishments?" + +"I wrote it because I thought it." + +"Is that any reason ye should write it? And there was another bit, too--it +made my hair stand on end when I saw it, to think how near I was sending +the copy to press without looking at it--something about a French +Socialist, and Church Property." + +"Oh! you mean, I suppose, the story of the French Socialist, who told me +that church property was just the only property in England which he would +spare, because it was the only one which had definite duties attached +to it, that the real devourers of the people were not the bishops, who, +however rich, were at least bound to work in return for their riches, +but the landlords and millionaires, who refused to confess the duties of +property, while they raved about its rights." + +"Bedad, that's it; and pretty doctrine, too!" + +"But it's true: it's an entirely new and a very striking notion, and I +consider it my duty to mention it." + +"Thrue! What the devil does that matter? There's a time to speak the truth, +and a time not, isn't there? It'll make a grand hit, now, in a leader upon +the Irish Church question, to back the prastes against the landlords. But +if I'd let that in as it stood, bedad, I'd have lost three parts of my +subscribers the next week. Every soul of the Independents, let alone the +Chartists, would have bid me good morning. Now do, like a good boy, give us +something more the right thing next time. Draw it strong.--A good drunken +supper-party and a police-row; if ye haven't seen one, get it up out of +Pater Priggins--or Laver might do, if the other wasn't convanient. That's +Dublin, to be sure, but one university's just like another. And give us a +seduction or two, and a brace of Dons carried home drunk from Barnwell by +the Procthors." + +"Really I never saw anything of the kind; and as for profligacy amongst +the Dons, I don't believe it exists. I'll call them idle, and bigoted, and +careless of the morals of the young men, because I know that they are so; +but as for anything more, I believe them to be as sober, respectable a set +of Pharisees as the world ever saw." + +Mr. O'Flynn was waxing warm, and the bully-vein began fast to show itself. + +"I don't care a curse, sir! My subscribers won't stand it, and they +sha'n't! I am a man of business, sir, and a man of the world, sir, and +faith that's more than you are, and I know what will sell the paper, and by +J----s I'll let no upstart spalpeen dictate to me!" + +"Then I'll tell you what, sir," quoth I, waxing warm in my turn, "I don't +know which are the greater rogues, you or your subscribers. You a patriot? +You are a humbug. Look at those advertisements, and deny it if you can. +Crying out for education, and helping to debauch the public mind with +Voltaire's 'Candide,' and Eugene Sue--swearing by Jesus, and puffing +Atheism and blasphemy--yelling at a quack government, quack law, +quack priesthoods, and then dirtying your fingers with half-crowns +for advertising Holloway's ointment and Parr's life pills--shrieking +about slavery of labour to capital, and inserting Moses and Son's +doggerel--ranting about searching investigations and the march of +knowledge, and concealing every fact which cannot be made to pander to the +passions of your dupes--extolling the freedom of the press, and showing +yourself in your own office a tyrant and a censor of the press. You a +patriot? You the people's friend? You are doing everything in your power to +blacken the people's cause in the eyes of their enemies. You are simply a +humbug, a hypocrite, and a scoundrel; and so I bid you good morning." + +Mr. O'Flynn had stood, during this harangue, speechless with passion, those +loose lips of his wreathing like a pair of earthworms. It was only when I +stopped that he regained his breath, and with a volley of incoherent oaths, +caught up his chair and hurled it at my head. Luckily, I had seen enough of +his temper already, to keep my hand on the lock of the door for the last +five minutes. I darted out of the room quicker than I ever did out of one +before or since. The chair took effect on the luckless door; and as I threw +a flying glance behind me, I saw one leg sticking through the middle panel, +in a way that augured ill for my skull, had it been in the way of Mr. +O'Flynn's fury. + +I ran home to Mackaye in a state of intense self-glorification, and told +him the whole story. He chuckled, he crowed, he hugged me to his bosom. + +"Leeze me o' ye! but I kenned ye were o' the true Norse blude after a'! + + "For a' that, an' a' that, + A man's a man for a' that. + +"Oh, but I hae expeckit it this month an' mare! Oh, but I prophesied it, +Johnnie!" + +"Then why, in Heaven's name, did you introduce me to such a scoundrel?" + +"I sent you to schule, lad, I sent you to schule. Ye wad na be ruled by me. +Ye tuk me for a puir doited auld misanthrope; an' I thocht to gie ye the +meat ye lusted after, an' fill ye wi' the fruit o' your ain desires. An' +noo that ye've gane doon in the fire o' temptation, an' conquered, here's +your reward standin' ready. Special prawvidences!--wha can doot them? I ha' +had mony--miracles I might ca' them, to see how they cam' just when I was +gaun daft wi' despair." + +And then he told me that the editor of a popular journal, of the Howitt +and Eliza Cook school, had called on me that morning, and promised me work +enough, and pay enough, to meet all present difficulties. + +I did indeed accept the curious coincidence, if not as a reward for an act +of straightforwardness, in which I saw no merit, at least as proof that the +upper powers had not altogether forgotten me. I found both the editor and +his periodical, as I should have wished them, temperate and sunny--somewhat +clap-trap and sentimental, perhaps, and afraid of speaking out, as all +parties are, but still willing to allow my fancy free range in light +fictions, descriptions of foreign countries, scraps of showy rose-pink +morality and such like; which, though they had no more power against the +raging mass of crime, misery, and discontent, around, than a peacock's +feather against a three-decker, still were all genial, graceful, kindly, +humanizing, and soothed my discontented and impatient heart in the work of +composition. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN. + + +One morning in February, a few days after this explosion, I was on the +point of starting to go to the dean's house about that weary list of +subscribers, which seemed destined never to be filled up, when my cousin +George burst in upon me. He was in the highest good spirits at having just +taken a double first-class at Cambridge; and after my congratulations, +sincere and hearty enough, were over, he offered to accompany me to that +reverend gentleman's house. + +He said in an off-hand way, that he had no particular business there, but +he thought it just as well to call on the dean and mention his success, in +case the old fellow should not have heard of it. + +"For you see," he said, "I am a sort of _protege_, both on my own account +and on Lord Lynedale's--Ellerton, he is now--you know he is just married to +the dean's niece, Miss Staunton--and Ellerton's a capital fellow--promised +me a living as soon as I'm in priest's orders. So my cue is now," he went +on as we walked down the Strand together, "to get ordained as fast as ever +I can." + +"But," I asked, "have you read much for ordination, or seen much of what a +clergyman's work should be?" + +"Oh! as for that--you know it isn't one out of ten who's ever entered a +school, or a cottage even, except to light a cigar, before he goes into the +church: and as for the examination, that's all humbug; any man may cram it +all up in a month--and, thanks to King's College, I knew all I wanted to +know before I went to Cambridge. And I shall be three-and-twenty by Trinity +Sunday, and then in I go, neck or nothing. Only the confounded bore is, +that this Bishop of London won't give one a title--won't let any man into +his diocese, who has not been ordained two years; and so I shall be shoved +down into some poking little country-curacy, without a chance of making +play before the world, or getting myself known at all. Horrid bore! isn't +it?" + +"I think," I said, "considering what London is just now, the bishop's +regulation seems to be one of the best specimens of episcopal wisdom that +I've heard of for some time." + +"Great bore for me, though, all the same: for I must make a name, I +can tell you, if I intend to get on. A person must work like a horse, +now-a-days, to succeed at all; and Lynedale's a desperately particular +fellow, with all sorts of _outre_ notions about people's duties and +vocations and heaven knows what." + +"Well," I said, "my dear cousin, and have you no high notions of a +clergyman's vocation? because we--I mean the working men--have. It's just +their high idea of what a clergyman should be, which makes them so furious +at clergymen for being what they are." + +"It's a queer way of showing their respect to the priesthood," he answered, +"to do all they can to exterminate it." + +"I dare say they are liable, like other men, to confound the thing with its +abuses; but if they hadn't some dim notion that the thing might be made a +good thing in itself, you may depend upon it they would not rave against +those abuses so fiercely." (The reader may see that I had not forgotten my +conversation with Miss Staunton.) "And," thought I to myself, "is it not +you, and such as you, who do so incorporate the abuses into the system, +that one really cannot tell which is which, and longs to shove the whole +thing aside as rotten to the core, and make a trial of something new?" + +"Well, but," I said, again returning to the charge, for the subject was +altogether curious and interesting to me, "do you really believe the +doctrines of the Prayer-book, George?" + +"Believe them!" he answered, in a tone of astonishment, "why not? I was +brought up a Churchman, whatever my parents were; I was always intended for +the ministry. I'd sign the Thirty-nine Articles now, against any man in +the three kingdoms: and as for all the proofs out of Scripture and Church +History, I've known them ever since I was sixteen--I'll get them all up +again in a week as fresh as ever." + +"But," I rejoined, astonished in my turn at my cousin's notion of what +belief was, "have you any personal faith?--you know what I mean--I hate +using cant words--but inward experience of the truth of all these great +ideas, which, true or false, you will have to preach and teach? Would you +live by them, die for them, as a patriot would for his country, now?" + +"My dear fellow, I don't know anything about all those Methodistical, +mystical, Calvinistical, inward experiences, and all that. I'm a Churchman, +remember, and a High Churchman, too; and the doctrine of the Church is, +that children are regenerated in holy baptism; and there's not the least +doubt, from the authority both of Scripture and the fathers, that that's +the--" + +"For Heaven's sake," I said, "no polemical discussions! Whether you're +right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking about. What I want to know is +this:--you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you +delight in God? Do you love Jesus Christ? Never mind what I do, or think, +or believe. What do you do, George?" + +"Well, my dear fellow, if you take things in that way, you know, of +course"--and he dropped his voice into that peculiar tone, by which all +sects seem to think they show their reverence; while to me, as to most +other working men, it never seemed anything but a symbol of the separation +and discrepancy between their daily thoughts and their religious ones--"of +course, we don't any of us think of these things half enough, and I'm sure +I wish I could be more earnest than I am; but I can only hope it will come +in time. The Church holds that there's a grace given in ordination; and +really--really, I do hope and wish to do my duty--indeed, one can't help +doing it; one is so pushed on by the immense competition for preferment; an +idle parson hasn't a chance now-a-days." + +"But," I asked again, half-laughing, half-disgusted, "do you know what your +duty is?" + +"Bless you, my good fellow, a man can't go wrong there. Carry out the +Church system; that's the thing--all laid down by rule and method. A man +has but to work out that--and it's the only one for the lower classes I'm +convinced." + +"Strange," I said, "that they have from the first been so little of that +opinion, that every attempt to enforce it, for the last three hundred +years, has ended either in persecution or revolution." + +"Ah! that was all those vile puritans' fault. They wouldn't give the Church +a chance of showing her powers." + +"What! not when she had it all her own way, during the whole eighteenth +century?" + +"Ah! but things are very different now. The clergy are awakened now to the +real beauty of the Catholic machinery; and you have no notion how much is +doing in church-building and schools, and societies of every sort and kind. +It is quite incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the +Church." + +"I believe," I said, "that the clergy are exceedingly improved; and I +believe, too, that the men to whom they owe all their improvement are the +Wesleys and Whitfields--in short, the very men whom they drove one by one +out of the Church, from persecution or disgust. And I do think it strange, +that if so much is doing for the lower classes, the working men, who form +the mass of the lower classes, are just those who scarcely feel the effects +of it; while the churches seem to be filled with children, and rich and +respectable, to the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower classes. A +strange religion this!" I went on, "and, to judge by its effects, a very +different one from that preached in Judea 1800 years ago, if we are to +believe the Gospel story." + +"What on earth do you mean? Is not the Church of England the very purest +form of Apostolic Christianity?" + +"It may be--and so may the other sects. But, somehow, in Judea, it was +the publicans and harlots who pressed into the kingdom of heaven; and it +was the common people who heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, was a +movement in the hearts of the lower order. But now, my dear fellow, you +rich, who used to be told, in St. James's time, to weep and howl, have +turned the tables upon us poor. It is _you_ who are talking, all day long, +of converting _us_. Look at any place of worship you like, orthodox and +heretical.--Who fill the pews?--the outcast and the reprobate? No! the +Pharisees and the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill His churches, +and say still, 'This people, these masses, who know not the Gospel are +accursed.' And the universal feeling, as far as I can judge, seems to be, +not 'how hardly shall they who have,' but how hardly shall they who have +_not_, 'riches, enter into the kingdom of heaven!'" + +"Upon my word," said he, laughing, "I did not give you credit for so much +eloquence: you seem to have studied the Bible to some purpose, too. I +didn't think that so much Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts +of Scripture. It's quite a new light to me. I'll just mark that card, and +play it when I get a convenient opportunity. It may be a winning one in +these democratic times." + +And he did play it, as I heard hereafter; but at present he seemed to +think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better, +and commenced quizzing the people whom we passed, humorously and neatly +enough; while I walked on in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the +"Pilgrim's Progress." And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He +was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all +the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what +was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the +confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own +heart, much less in that of another? + +The dean was not at home that day, having left town on business. George +nodded familiarly to the footman who opened the door. + +"You'll mind and send me word the moment your master comes home--mind now!" + +The fellow promised obedience, and we walked away. + +"You seem to be very intimate here," said I, "with all parties?" + +"Oh! footmen are useful animals--a half-sovereign now and then is not +altogether thrown away upon them. But as for the higher powers, it is very +easy to make oneself at home in the dean's study, but not so much so as +to get a footing in the drawing-room above. I suspect he keeps a precious +sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian." + +"But," I asked, as a jealous pang shot through my heart, "how did you +contrive to get this same footing at all? When I met you at Cambridge, you +seemed already well acquainted with these people." + +"How?--how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent? By working and +casting about and about, and drawing on it inch by inch, as I drew on them +for years, my boy; and cold enough the scent was. You recollect that day +at the Dulwich Gallery? I tried to see the arms on the carriage, but there +were none; so that cock wouldn't fight." + +"The arms! I should never have thought of such a plan." + +"Dare say you wouldn't. Then I harked back to the doorkeeper, while you +were St. Sebastianizing. He didn't know their names, or didn't choose to +show me their ticket, on which it ought to have been; so I went to one of +the fellows whom I knew, and got him to find out. There comes out the value +of money--for money makes acquaintances. Well, I found who they were.--Then +I saw no chance of getting at them. But for the rest of that year at +Cambridge, I beat every bush in the university, to find some one who +knew them; and as fortune favours the brave, at last I hit off this Lord +Lynedale; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps--a fine catch in +himself, and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin. So I +made a dead set at him; and tight work I had to nab him, I can tell you, +for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, +and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort +of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was +always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and +stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions +of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I +stood it, and here I am." + +"And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this--" meanness I was on +the point of saying. "Surely you are in no want of money--your father could +buy you a good living to-morrow." + +"And he will, but not the one I want; and he could not buy me reputation, +power, rank, do you see, Alton, my genius? And what's more, he couldn't buy +me a certain little tit-bit, a jewel, worth a Jew's eye and a half, Alton, +that I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye on it." + +My heart beat fast and fierce, but he ran on-- + +"Do you think I'd have eaten all this dirt if it hadn't lain in my way to +her? Eat dirt! I'd drink blood, Alton--though I don't often deal in strong +words--if it lay in that road. I never set my heart on a thing yet, that +I didn't get it at last by fair means or foul--and I'll get her! I don't +care for her money, though that's a pretty plum. Upon my life, I don't. I +worship her, limbs and eyes. I worship the very ground she treads on. She's +a duck and a darling," said he, smacking his lips like an Ogre over his +prey, "and I'll have her before I've done, so help me--" + +"Whom do you mean?" I stammered out. + +"Lillian, you blind beetle." + +I dropped his arm--"Never, as I live!" + +He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh. + +"Hullo! my eye and Betty Martin! You don't mean to say that I have the +honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin?" + +I made no answer. + +"Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You and I are very +good friends, and we may help each other, if we choose, like kith and kin +in this here wale. So if you're fool enough to quarrel with me, I warn you +I'm not fool enough to return the compliment. Only" (lowering his voice), +"just bear one little thing in mind--that I am, unfortunately, of a +somewhat determined humour; and if folks will get in my way, why it's not +my fault if I drive over them. You understand? Well, if you intend to be +sulky, I don't. So good morning, till you feel yourself better." + +And he turned gaily down a side-street and disappeared, looking taller, +handsomer, manfuller than ever. + +I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival, but a +tyrant; and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can +inspire. The eleven pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four +pounds was the utmost which I had been able to hoard up that autumn, by +dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no chance of profit from my book +for months to come--if indeed it ever got published, which I hardly dare +believe it would; and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor +delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I dared even +to seem an obstacle in his way. + +I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to direct my +thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror and degradation +crushed me. Day after day I sat over the fire, and jumped up and went into +the shop, to find something which I did not want, and peep listlessly into +a dozen books, one after the other, and then wander back again to the +fireside, to sit mooning and moping, starting at that horrible incubus of +debt--a devil which may give mad strength to the strong, but only paralyses +the weak. And I was weak, as every poet is, more or less. There was in me, +as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets, that feminine vein--a +receptive as well as a creative faculty--which kept up in me a continual +thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And here was circumstance after +circumstance goading me onward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual +wanderings, never ceasing exertions; every hour calling on me to do, while +I was only longing to be--to sit and observe, and fancy, and build freely +at my own will. And then--as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion +was not in itself sufficient torment--to have that accursed debt--that +knowledge that I was in a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before +me, to cripple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions +to which it compelled me! I hated the bustle--the crowds; the ceaseless +roar of the street outside maddened me. I longed in vain for peace--for one +day's freedom--to be one hour a shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the +blue sky, without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting! "Oh! +that I had wings as a dove!--then would I flee away, and be at rest!"-- + +And then, more than once or twice either, the thoughts of suicide crossed +me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last +chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away +the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralysed me again; +for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance +of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful +sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice +of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how +I had betrayed my suffering brothers.--How, for the sake of vanity and +patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights--their +wrongs. And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy--"a +double-minded man, unstable in all his ways?" + +At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterwards, had been watching all along +my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that +whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first +impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my +pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my +lips. But now this fresh discovery--the knowledge that it was not only in +my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so--had utterly +unmanned me; and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out +came the truth with tears of bitter shame. + +The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table +drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers. + +"No! no! no! best, noblest of friends! I will not burden you with the +fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to gaol sooner +than take your money. If you offer it me I will leave the house, bag and +baggage, this moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution. + +"I havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, deliberately, "seeing +that there's na necessity for paying debits twice owre, when ye ha' the +stampt receipt for them." And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and +rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin. + +Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at +it, looked at him--there was nothing but clear, smiling assurance in his +beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled +off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then +relieved himself by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with +tobacco till he burst the bowl. + +Yes; it was no dream!--the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden +relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner +suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed suddenly to +collapse, and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for +gratitude. + + * * * * * + +But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld +ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a +loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort, +that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his +circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks +back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast +o' phizog," containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the +writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr. +Mackaye, "o' whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess +themselves no that ignorant," should write to George, ascertain the sum, +and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, +when he thought fit--"Sae there's the remnant--aucht pounds, sax shillings, +an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters anent the +same transaction." + +"But what sort of handwriting was it?" asked I, almost disregarding the +welcome coin. + +"Ou, then--aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was no chirographosophic +himsel--an' he had na curiosity anent ony sic passage o' aristocratic +romance." + +"But what was the postmark of the letter?" + +"Why for suld I speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown, +they'd ha' sign't their names upon the document. An' gin they didna sae +intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers +an' seals?" + +"But where is the cover?" + +"Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o' +geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare +it up--aiblins for pipe-lights--I canna mind at this time." + +"And why," asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to +confess--"why did you not tell me before?" + +"How wad I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I thocht it no that bad +a lesson for ye, to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms +that break the head--whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the +delights o' spending borrowed siller." + +There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to +work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in +my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale? +or was it--could it be--Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious +that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half a dozen equally +improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true +one; and hoarded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I +should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair. +They were a gift from her--a pledge--the first fruits of--I dare not +confess to myself what. + +Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast +fitting myself for Bedlam; if, indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it +already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten +pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be +correct; but so I did, and so I suffered. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +A TRUE NOBLEMAN. + + +At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poems actually in +the press. Oh! the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of +proofs! And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever +did in manuscript!--One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly +at a glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after +line, and sentence after sentence.--There was only one drawback to my +happiness--Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it. He had never +grumbled at what I considered, and still do consider, my cardinal offence, +the omission of the strong political passages; he seemed, on the contrary, +in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it than otherwise. +It was my publishing at all at which he growled. + +"Ech," he said, "owre young to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the +way o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but +oot he rins cackling wi' the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, +as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I +wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid +either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding an' moss-trooping, an' +rugging an' riving i' the wilderness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' +lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak example too, gin ye were minded, by +Moses, the man o' God, that was joost forty years at the learning o' the +Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life, an' +then fun' to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years +too sune--an' then had forty years mair, after that, o' marching an' +law-giving, an' bearing the burdens o' the people, before he turned poet." + +"Poet, sir! I never saw Moses in that light before." + +"Then ye'll just read the 90th Psalm--'the prayer o' Moses, the man o' +God'--the grandest piece o' lyric, to my taste, that I ever heard o' on the +face o' God's earth, an' see what a man can write that'll have the patience +to wait a century or twa before he rins to the publisher's. I gie ye up +fra' this moment; the letting out o' ink is like the letting out o' waters, +or the eating o' opium, or the getting up at public meetings.--When a man +begins he canna stop. There's nae mair enslaving lust o' the flesh under +the heaven than that same _furor scribendi_, as the Latins hae it." + +But at last my poems were printed, and bound, and actually published, and +I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got +into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed +in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed +into a grin, when his oracle, the _Spectator_, the only honest paper, +according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after asserting +its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, +grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes--I was a real +live author at last, and signed myself, by special request, in the * * * * +Magazine, as "the author of Songs of the Highways." At last it struck me, +and Mackaye too, who, however he hated flunkeydom, never overlooked an act +of discourtesy, that it would be right for me to call upon the dean, and +thank him formally for all the real kindness he had shown me. So I went to +the handsome house off Harley-street, and was shown into his study, and saw +my own book lying on the table, and was welcomed by the good old man, and +congratulated on my success, and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in +"yielding to more experienced opinions than my own, and submitting to a +censorship which, however severe it might have appeared at first, was, as +the event proved, benignant both in its intentions and effects?" + +And then I was asked, even I, to breakfast there the next morning. And I +went, and found no one there but some scientific gentlemen, to whom I was +introduced as "the young man whose poems we were talking of last night." +And Lillian sat at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee and +tea. And between ecstasy at seeing her, and the intense relief of not +finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there, I sat in a delirium of +silent joy, stealing glances at her beauty, and listening with all my ears +to the conversation, which turned upon the new-married couple. + +I heard endless praises, to which I could not but assent in silence, of +Lord Ellerton's perfections. His very personal appearance had been enough +to captivate my fancy; and then they went on to talk of his magnificent +philanthropic schemes, and his deep sense, of the high duties of a +landlord; and how, finding himself, at his father's death, the possessor of +two vast but neglected estates, he had sold one in order to be able to do +justice to the other, instead of laying house to house, and field to field, +like most of his compeers, "till he stood alone in the land, and there was +no place left;" and how he had lowered his rents, even though it had forced +him to put down the ancestral pack of hounds, and live in a corner of the +old castle; and how he was draining, claying, breaking up old moorlands, +and building churches, and endowing schools, and improving cottages; +and how he was expelling the old ignorant bankrupt race of farmers, and +advertising everywhere for men of capital, and science, and character, who +would have courage to cultivate flax and silk, and try every species of +experiment; and how he had one scientific farmer after another, staying in +his house as a friend; and how he had numbers of his books rebound in plain +covers, that he might lend them to every one on his estate who wished to +read them; and how he had thrown open his picture gallery, not only to the +inhabitants of the neighbouring town, but what (strange to say) seemed to +strike the party as still more remarkable, to the labourers of his own +village; and how he was at that moment busy transforming an old unoccupied +manor-house into a great associate farm, in which all the labourers were +to live under one roof, with a common kitchen and dining-hall, clerks and +superintendents, whom they were to choose, subject only to his approval, +and all of them, from the least to the greatest, have their own interest +in the farm, and be paid by percentage on the profits; and how he had one +of the first political economists of the day staying with him, in order to +work out for him tables of proportionate remuneration, applicable to such +an agricultural establishment; and how, too, he was giving the spade-labour +system a fair-trial, by laying out small cottage-farms, on rocky knolls and +sides of glens, too steep to be cultivated by the plough; and was locating +on them the most intelligent artisans whom he could draft from the +manufacturing town hard by-- + +And at that notion, my brain grew giddy with the hope of seeing myself one +day in one of those same cottages, tilling the earth, under God's sky, and +perhaps--. And then a whole cloud-world of love, freedom, fame, simple, +graceful country luxury steamed up across my brain, to end--not, like the +man's in the "Arabian Nights," in my kicking over the tray of China, which +formed the base-point of my inverted pyramid of hope--but in my finding the +contents of my plate deposited in my lap, while I was gazing fixedly at +Lillian. + +I must say for myself, though, that such accidents happened seldom; whether +it was bashfulness, or the tact which generally, I believe, accompanies +a weak and nervous body, and an active mind; or whether it was that I +possessed enough relationship to the monkey-tribe to make me a first-rate +mimic, I used to get tolerably well through on these occasions, by acting +on the golden rule of never doing anything which I had not seen some one +else do first--a rule which never brought me into any greater scrape than +swallowing something intolerably hot, sour, and nasty (whereof I never +discovered the name), because I had seen the dean do so a moment before. + +But one thing struck me through the whole of this conversation--the way in +which the new-married Lady Ellerton was spoken of, as aiding, encouraging, +originating--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide, for her husband--in all +these noble plans. She had already acquainted herself with every woman on +the estate; she was the dispenser, not merely of alms--for those seemed a +disagreeable necessity, from which Lord Ellerton was anxious to escape as +soon as possible--but of advice, comfort, and encouragement. She not only +visited the sick, and taught in the schools--avocations which, thank God, +I have reason to believe are matters of course, not only in the families +of clergymen, but those of most squires and noblemen, when they reside on +their estates--but seemed, from the hints which I gathered, to be utterly +devoted, body and soul, to the welfare of the dwellers on her husband's +land. + +"I had no notion," I dared at last to remark, humbly enough, "that +Miss--Lady Ellerton cared so much for the people." + +"Really! One feels inclined sometimes to wish that she cared for anything +beside them," said Lillian, half to her father and half to me. + +This gave a fresh shake to my estimate of that remarkable woman's +character. But still, who could be prouder, more imperious, more abrupt in +manner, harsh, even to the very verge of good-breeding? (for I had learnt +what good-breeding was, from the debating society as well as from the +drawing-room;) and, above all, had she not tried to keep me from Lillian? +But these cloudy thoughts melted rapidly away in that sunny atmosphere of +success and happiness, and I went home as merry as a bird, and wrote all +the morning more gracefully and sportively, as I fancied, than I had ever +yet done. + +But my bliss did not end here. In a week or so, behold one morning a +note--written, indeed, by the dean--but directed in Lillian's own hand, +inviting me to come there to tea, that I might see a few, of the literary +characters of the day. + +I covered the envelope with kisses, and thrust it next my fluttering heart. +I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye. He looked pleased, yet pensive, +and then broke out with a fresh adaptation of his favourite song, + + --and shovel hats and a' that-- + A man's a man for a' that. + +"The auld gentleman is a man and a gentleman; an' has made a verra +courteous, an' weel considerit move, gin ye ha' the sense to profit by it, +an' no turn it to yer ain destruction." + +"Destruction?" + +"Ay--that's the word, an' nothing less, laddie!" + +And he went into the outer shop, and returned with a volume of Bulwer's +"Ernest Maltravers." + +"What! are you a novel reader, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"How do ye ken what I may ha' thocht gude to read in my time? Yell be +pleased the noo to sit down an' begin at that page--an read, mark, learn, +an' inwardly digest, the history of Castruccio Cesarini--an' the gude God +gie ye grace to lay the same to heart." + +I read that fearful story; and my heart sunk, and my eyes were full of +tears, long ere I had finished it. Suddenly I looked up at Mackaye, half +angry at the pointed allusion to my own case. + +The old man was watching me intently, with folded hands, and a smile of +solemn interest and affection worthy of Socrates himself. He turned his +head as I looked up, but his lips kept moving. I fancied, I know not why, +that he was praying for me. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR. + + +So to the party I went, and had the delight of seeing and hearing the men +with whose names I had been long acquainted, as the leaders of scientific +discovery in this wondrous age; and more than one poet, too, over whose +works I had gloated, whom I had worshipped in secret. Intense was the +pleasure of now realizing to myself, as living men, wearing the same flesh +and blood as myself, the names which had been to me mythic ideas. Lillian +was there among them, more exquisite than ever; but even she at first +attracted my eyes and thoughts less than did the truly great men around +her. I hung on every word they spoke, I watched every gesture, as if they +must have some deep significance; the very way in which they drank their +coffee was a matter of interest to me. I was almost disappointed to see +them eat and chat like common men. I expected that pearls and diamonds +would drop from their lips, as they did from those of the girl, in the +fairy-tale, every time they opened their mouths; and certainly, the +conversation that evening was a new world to me--though I could only, of +course, be a listener. Indeed, I wished to be nothing more. I felt that +I was taking my place there among the holy guild of authors--that I too, +however humbly, had a thing to say, and had said it; and I was content to +sit on the lowest step of the literary temple, without envy for those elder +and more practised priests of wisdom, who had earned by long labour the +freedom of the inner shrine. I should have been quite happy enough standing +there, looking and listening--but I was at last forced to come forward. +Lillian was busy chatting with grave, grey-headed men, who seemed as ready +to flirt, and pet and admire the lovely little fairy, as if they had been +as young and gay as herself. It was enough for me to see her appreciated +and admired. I loved them for smiling on her, for handing her from her seat +to the piano with reverent courtesy: gladly would I have taken their place: +I was content, however, to be only a spectator; for it was not my rank, but +my youth, I was glad to fancy, which denied me that blissful honour. But +as she sang, I could not help stealing up to the piano; and, feasting my +greedy eyes with every motion of those delicious lips, listen and listen, +entranced, and living only in that melody. + +Suddenly, after singing two or three songs, she began fingering the keys, +and struck into an old air, wild and plaintive, rising and falling like the +swell of an AEolian harp upon a distant breeze. + +"Ah! now," she said, "if I could get words for that! What an exquisite +lament somebody might write to it, if they could only thoroughly take in +the feeling and meaning of it." + +"Perhaps," I said, humbly, "that is the only way to write songs--to let +some air get possession of ones whole soul, and gradually inspire the words +for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them, to +wake up the prophetic spirit within them." + +She looked up, just as if she had been unconscious of my presence till that +moment. + +"Ah! Mr. Locke!--well, if you understand my meaning so thoroughly, perhaps +you will try and write some words for me." + +"I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the meaning of the air." + +"Oh! then, listen while I play it over again. I am sure _you_ ought to +appreciate anything so sad and tender." + +And she did play it, to my delight, over again, even more gracefully and +carefully than before--making the inarticulate sounds speak a mysterious +train of thoughts and emotions. It is strange how little real intellect, in +women especially, is required for an exquisite appreciation of the beauties +of music--perhaps, because it appeals to the heart and not the head. + +She rose and left the piano, saying archly, "Now, don't forget your +promise;" and I, poor fool, my sunlight suddenly withdrawn, began torturing +my brains on the instant to think of a subject. + +As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to +me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, +which hung on the wall--a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a +line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind--a grey shroud of rain sweeping +up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays +of the setting sun--a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through +shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides +glittering in one long line of level light. + +They seemed thoroughly conversant with art; and as I listened to their +criticisms, I learnt more in five minutes about the characteristics of +a really true and good picture, and about the perfection to which our +unrivalled English landscape-painters have attained, than I ever did from +all the books and criticisms which I had read. One of them had seen the +spot represented, at the mouth of the Dee, and began telling wild stories +of salmon-fishing, and wildfowl shooting--and then a tale of a girl, who, +in bringing her father's cattle home across the sands, had been caught by +a sudden flow of the tide, and found next day a corpse hanging among the +stake-nets far below. The tragedy, the art of the picture, the simple, +dreary grandeur of the scenery, took possession of me; and I stood gazing +a long time, and fancying myself pacing the sands, and wondering whether +there were shells upon it--I had often longed for once only in my life to +pick up shells--when Lady Ellerton, whom I had not before noticed, woke me +from my reverie. + +I took the liberty of asking after Lord Ellerton. + +"He is not in town--he has stayed behind for one day to attend a great +meeting of his tenantry--you will see the account in the papers to-morrow +morning--he comes to-morrow." And as she spoke her whole face and figure +seemed to glow and heave, in spite of herself, with pride and affection. + +"And now, come with me, Mr. Locke--the * * * ambassador wishes to speak to +you." + +"The * * * ambassador!" I said, startled; for let us be as democratic as we +will, there is something in the name of great officers which awes, perhaps +rightly, for the moment, and it requires a strong act of self-possession +to recollect that "a man's a man for a' that." Besides, I knew enough of +the great man in question to stand in awe of him for his own sake, having +lately read a panegyric of him, which perfectly astounded me, by its +description of his piety and virtue, his family affection, and patriarchal +simplicity, the liberality and philanthropy of all his measures, and the +enormous intellectual powers, and stores of learning, which enabled him, +with the affairs of Europe on his shoulders, to write deeply and originally +on the most abstruse questions of theology, history, and science. + +Lady Ellerton seemed to guess my thoughts. "You need not be afraid of +meeting an aristocrat, in the vulgar sense of the word. You will see one +who, once perhaps as unknown as yourself, has risen by virtue and wisdom to +guide the destinies of nations--and shall I tell you how? Not by fawning +and yielding to the fancies of the great; not by compromising his own +convictions to suit their prejudices--" + +I felt the rebuke, but she went on-- + +"He owes his greatness to having dared, one evening, to contradict a +crown-prince to his face, and fairly conquer him in argument, and thereby +bind the truly royal heart to him for ever." + +"There are few scions of royalty to whose favour that would be a likely +path." + +"True; and therefore the greater honour is due to the young student who +could contradict, and the prince who could be contradicted." + +By this time we had arrived in the great man's presence; he was sitting +with a little circle round him, in the further drawing-room, and certainly +I never saw a nobler specimen of humanity. I felt myself at once before a +hero--not of war and bloodshed, but of peace and civilization; his portly +and ample figure, fair hair and delicate complexion, and, above all, +the benignant calm of his countenance, told of a character gentle and +genial--at peace with himself and all the world; while the exquisite +proportion of his chiselled and classic features, the lofty and ample +brain, and the keen, thoughtful eye, bespoke, at the first glance, +refinement and wisdom-- + + The reason firm, the temperate will-- + Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. + +I am not ashamed to say, Chartist as I am, that I felt inclined to fall +upon my knees, and own a master of God's own making. + +He received my beautiful guide with a look of chivalrous affection, which +I observed that she returned with interest; and then spoke in a voice +peculiarly bland and melodious: + +"So, my dear lady, this is the _protege_ of whom you have so often spoken?" + +So she had often spoken of me! Blind fool that I was, I only took it in as +food for my own self-conceit, that my enemy (for so I actually fancied her) +could not help praising me. + +"I have read your little book, sir," he said, in the same soft, benignant +voice, "with very great pleasure. It is another proof, if I required any, +of the under-current of living and healthful thought which exists even in +the less-known ranks of your great nation. I shall send it to some young +friends of mine in Germany, to show them that Englishmen can feel acutely +and speak boldly on the social evils of their country, without indulging +in that frantic and bitter revolutionary spirit, which warps so many young +minds among us. You understand the German language at all?" + +I had not that honour. + +"Well, you must learn it. We have much to teach you in the sphere of +abstract thought, as you have much to teach us in those of the practical +reason and the knowledge of mankind. I should be glad to see you some +day in a German university. I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual +fraternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic stock, by +welcoming all brave young English spirits to their ancient fatherland. +Perhaps hereafter your kind friends here will be able to lend you to me. +The means are easy, thank God! You will find in the Germans true brothers, +in ways even more practical than sympathy and affection." + +I could not but thank the great man, with many blushes, and went home that +night utterly _"tete montee,"_ as I believe the French phrase is--beside +myself with gratified vanity and love; to lie sleepless under a severe fit +of asthma--sent perhaps as a wholesome chastisement to cool my excited +spirits down to something like a rational pitch. As I lay castle-building, +Lillian's wild air rang still in my ears, and combined itself somehow with +that picture of the Cheshire sands, and the story of the drowned girl, +till it shaped itself into a song, which, as it is yet unpublished, and +as I have hitherto obtruded little or nothing of my own composition on my +readers, I may be excused for inserting it here. + + I. + + "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, + And call the cattle home, + And call the cattle home, + Across the sands o' Dee;" + The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, + And all alone went she. + + II. + + The creeping tide came up along the sand, + And o'er and o'er the sand, + And round and round the sand, + As far as eye could see; + The blinding mist came down and hid the land-- + And never home came she. + + III. + + "Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- + A tress o' golden hair, + O' drowned maiden's hair, + Above the nets at sea? + Was never salmon yet that shone so fair, + Among the stakes on Dee." + + IV. + + They rowed her in across the rolling foam, + The cruel crawling foam, + The cruel hungry foam, + To her grave beside the sea: + But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, + Across the sands o' Dee. + +There--let it go!--it was meant as an offering for one whom it never +reached. + +About mid-day I took my way towards the dean's house, to thank him for +his hospitality--and, I need not say, to present my offering at my idol's +shrine; and as I went, I conned over a dozen complimentary speeches about +Lord Ellerton's wisdom, liberality, eloquence--but behold! the shutters of +the house were closed. What could be the matter? It was full ten minutes +before the door was opened; and then, at last, an old woman, her eyes +red with weeping, made her appearance. My thoughts flew instantly to +Lillian--something must have befallen her. I gasped out her name first, and +then, recollecting myself, asked for the dean. + +"They had all left town that morning," + +"Miss--Miss Winnstay--is she ill?" + +"No." + +"Thank God!" I breathed freely again. What matter what happened to all the +world beside? + +"Ay, thank God, indeed; but poor Lord Ellerton was thrown from his horse +last night and brought home dead. A messenger came here by six this +morning, and they're all gone off to * * * *. Her ladyship's raving +mad.--And no wonder." And she burst out crying afresh, and shut the door in +my face. + +Lord Ellerton dead! and Lillian gone too! Something whispered that I should +have cause to remember that day. My heart sunk within me. When should I see +her again? + +That day was the 1st of June, 1845. On the 10th of April, 1848, I saw +Lillian Winnstay again. Dare I write my history between those two points of +time? Yes, even that must be done, for the sake of the rich who read, and +the poor who suffer. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY. + + +My triumph had received a cruel check enough when just at its height, and +more were appointed to follow. Behold! some two days after, another--all +the more bitter, because my conscience whispered that it was not altogether +undeserved. The people's press had been hitherto praising and petting me +lovingly enough. I had been classed (and heaven knows that the comparison +was dearer to me than all the applause of the wealthy) with the Corn-Law +Rhymer, and the author of the "Purgatory of Suicides." My class had claimed +my talents as their own--another "voice fresh from the heart of nature," +another "untutored songster of the wilderness," another "prophet arisen +among the suffering millions,"--when, one day, behold in Mr. O'Flynn's +paper a long and fierce attack on me, my poems, my early history! How he +could have got at some of the facts there mentioned, how he could have +dared to inform his readers that I had broken my mother's heart by my +misconduct, I cannot conceive; unless my worthy brother-in-law, the Baptist +preacher, had been kind enough to furnish him with the materials. But +however that may be, he showed me no mercy. I was suddenly discovered to be +a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat. Such paltry talent as I had, +I had prostituted for the sake of fame. I had deserted The People's Cause +for filthy lucre--an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with +withering scorn--_in print_. Nay, more, I would write, and notoriously did +write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical, where I could earn a shilling +by an enormous gooseberry, or a scrap of private slander. And the working +men were solemnly warned to beware of me and my writings, till the editor +had further investigated certain ugly facts in my history, which he would +in due time report to his patriotic and enlightened readers. + +All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole heart, for I +knew that I could not altogether exculpate myself; and to that miserable +certainty was added the dread of some fresh exposure. Had he actually heard +of the omissions in my poems?--and if he once touched on that subject, +what could I answer? Oh! how bitterly now I felt the force of the critic's +careless lash! The awful responsibility of those written words, which +we bandy about so thoughtlessly! How I recollected now, with shame and +remorse, all the hasty and cruel utterances to which I, too, had given +vent against those who had dared to differ from me; the harsh, one-sided +judgments, the reckless imputations of motive, the bitter sneers, +"rejoicing in evil rather than in the truth." How I, too, had longed to +prove my victims in the wrong, and turned away, not only lazily, but +angrily, from many an exculpatory fact! And here was my Nemesis come at +last. As I had done unto others, so it was done unto me! + +It was right that it should be so. However indignant, mad, almost +murderous, I felt at the time, I thank God for it now. It is good to be +punished in kind. It is good to be made to feel what we have made others +feel. It is good--anything is good, however bitter, which shows us that +there is such a law as retribution; that we are not the sport of blind +chance or a triumphant fiend, but that there is a God who judges the +earth--righteous to repay every man according to his works. + +But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort--and, full of rage and +shame, I dashed the paper down before Mackaye. "How shall I answer him? +What shall I say?" + +The old man read it all through, with a grim saturnine smile. + +"Hoolie, hoolie, speech, is o' silver--silence is o' gold says Thomas +Carlyle, anent this an' ither matters. Wha'd be fashed wi' sic blethers? +Ye'll just abide patient, and haud still in the Lord, until this tyranny be +owerpast. Commit your cause to him, said the auld Psalmist, an' he'll mak +your righteousness as clear as the light, an' your just dealing as the +noonday." + +"But I must explain; I owe it as a duty to myself; I must refute these +charges; I must justify myself to our friends." + +"Can ye do that same, laddie?" asked he, with one of his quaint, searching +looks. Somehow I blushed, and could not altogether meet his eye, while he +went on, "--An' gin ye could, whaur would ye do 't? I ken na periodical +whar the editor will gie ye a clear stage an' no favour to bang him ower +the lugs." + +"Then I will try some other paper." + +"An' what for then? They that read him, winna read the ither; an' they that +read the ither, winna read him. He has his ain set o' dupes like every +ither editor; an' ye mun let him gang his gate, an' feed his ain kye with +his ain hay. He'll no change it for your bidding." + +"What an abominable thing this whole business of the press is then, if each +editor is to be allowed to humbug his readers at his pleasure, without a +possibility of exposing or contradicting him!" + +"An' ye've just spoken the truth, laddie. There's na mair accursed +inquisition, than this of thae self-elected popes, the editors. That +puir auld Roman ane, ye can bring him forat when ye list, bad as he +is. 'Faenum habet in cornu;' his name's ower his shop-door. But these +anonymies--priests o' the order of Melchisedec by the deevil's side, +without father or mither, beginning o' years nor end o' days--without a +local habitation or a name-as kittle to baud as a brock in a cairn--" + +"What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye?" asked I, for he was getting altogether +unintelligibly Scotch, as was his custom when excited. + +"Ou, I forgot; ye're a puir Southern body, an' no sensible to the +gran' metaphoric powers o' the true Dawric. But it's an accursit state +a'thegither, the noo, this, o' the anonymous press--oreeginally devised, ye +ken, by Balaam the son o' Beor, for serving God wi'out the deevil's finding +it out--an' noo, after the way o' human institutions, translated ower +to help folks to serve the deevil without God's finding it out. I'm no' +astonished at the puir expiring religious press for siccan a fa'; but for +the working men to be a' that's bad--it's grewsome to behold. I'll tell ye +what, my bairn, there's na salvation for the workmen, while they defile +themselves this fashion, wi' a' the very idols o' their ain tyrants--wi' +salvation by act o' parliament--irresponsible rights o' property--anonymous +Balaamry--fechtin' that canny auld farrant fiend, Mammon, wi' his ain +weapons--and then a' fleyed, because they get well beaten for their pains. +I'm sair forfaughten this mony a year wi' watching the puir gowks, trying +to do God's wark wi' the deevil's tools. Tak tent o' that." + +And I did "tak tent o' it." Still there would have been as little present +consolation as usual in Mackaye's unwelcome truths, even if the matter had +stopped there. But, alas! it did not stop there. O'Flynn seemed determined +to "run a muck" at me. Every week some fresh attack appeared. The very +passages about the universities and church property, which had caused our +quarrel, were paraded against me, with free additions and comments; and, at +last, to my horror, out came the very story which I had all along dreaded, +about the expurgation of my poems, with the coarsest allusions to petticoat +influence--aristocratic kisses--and the Duchess of Devonshire canvassing +draymen for Fox, &c., &c. How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot +conceive. Mackaye and Crossthwaite, I had thought, were the only souls to +whom I had ever breathed the secret, and they denied indignantly the having +ever betrayed my weakness. How it came out, I say again, I cannot conceive; +except because it is a great everlasting law, and sure to fulfil itself +sooner or later, as we may see by the histories of every remarkable, and +many an unremarkable, man--"There is nothing secret, but it shall be made +manifest; and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet, shall be proclaimed +upon the house-tops." + +For some time after that last exposure, I was thoroughly crest-fallen--and +not without reason. I had been giving a few lectures among the working men, +on various literary and social subjects. I found my audience decrease--and +those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me. In +vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently than my own opinions +justified. My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they +had lost faith in me. + +At last, in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, I was indulging, and +honestly too, in some very glowing and passionate praise of the true +nobleness of a man, whom neither birth nor education could blind to the +evils of society; who, for the sake of the suffering many, could trample +under foot his hereditary pride, and become an outcast for the People's +Cause. + +I heard a whisper close to me, from one whose opinion I valued, and value +still--a scholar and a poet, one who had tasted poverty, and slander, and a +prison, for The Good Cause: + +"Fine talk: but it's 'all in his day's work.' Will he dare to say that +to-morrow to the ladies at the West-end?" + +No--I should not. I knew it; and at that instant I felt myself a liar, +and stopped short--my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I fumbled +at my papers--clutched the water-tumbler--tried to go on--stopped short +again--caught up my hat, and rushed from the room, amid peals of astonished +laughter. + +It was some months after this that, fancying the storm blown over, I +summoned up courage enough to attend a political meeting of our party; but +even there my Nemesis met full face. After some sanguinary speech, I really +forgot from whom, and, if I recollected, God forbid that I should tell now, +I dared to controvert, mildly enough, Heaven knows, some especially frantic +assertion or other. But before I could get out three sentences, O'Flynn +flew at me with a coarse invective, hounded on, by-the-by, by one who, +calling himself a gentleman, might have been expected to know better. +But, indeed, he and O'Flynn had the same object in view, which was simply +to sell their paper; and as a means to that great end, to pander to the +fiercest passions of their readers, to bully and silence all moderate and +rational Chartists, and pet and tar on the physical-force men, till the +poor fellows began to take them at their word. Then, when it came to deeds +and not to talk, and people got frightened, and the sale of the paper +decreased a little, a blessed change came over them--and they awoke one +morning meeker than lambs; "ulterior measures" had vanished back into +the barbarous ages, pikes, vitriol-bottles, and all; and the public were +entertained with nothing but homilies on patience and resignation, the +"triumphs of moral justice," the "omnipotence of public opinion," and the +"gentle conquests of fraternal love"--till it was safe to talk treason and +slaughter again. + +But just then treason happened to be at a premium. Sedition, which had been +floundering on in a confused, disconsolate, underground way ever since +1842, was supposed by the public to be dead; and for that very reason it +was safe to talk it, or, at least, back up those who chose to do so. And +so I got no quarter--though really, if the truth must be told, I had said +nothing unreasonable. + +Home I went disgusted, to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I +might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how +little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, +the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of +the poetry which they admired so much! + +I was not, however, left alone to scribble in peace, either by O'Flynn or +by his readers, who formed, alas! just then, only too large a portion of +the thinking artizans; every day brought some fresh slight or annoyance +with it, till I received one afternoon, by the Parcels Delivery Company, +a large unpaid packet, containing, to my infinite disgust, an old pair of +yellow plush breeches, with a recommendation to wear them, whose meaning +could not be mistaken. + +Furious, I thrust the unoffending garment into the lire, and held it there +with the tongs, regardless of the horrible smell which accompanied its +martyrdom, till the lady-lodger on the first floor rushed down to inquire +whether the house was on fire. + +I answered by hurling a book at her head, and brought down a volley of +abuse, under which I sat in sulky patience, till Mackaye and Crossthwaite +came in, and found her railing in the doorway, and me sitting over the +fire, still intent on the frizzling remains of the breeches. + +"Was this insult of your invention, Mr. Crossthwaite?" asked I, in a tone +of lofty indignation, holding up the last scrap of unroasted plush. + +Roars of laughter from both of them made me only more frantic, and I broke +out so incoherently, that it was some time before the pair could make out +the cause of my fury. + +"Upon my honour, Locke," quoth John, at last, holding his sides, "I +never sent them; though, on the whole--you've made my stomach ache with +laughing. I can't speak. But you must expect a joke or two, after your late +fashionable connexions." + +I stood, still and white with rage. + +"Really, my good fellow, how can you wonder if our friends suspect you? +Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and The +Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected +our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? And can +you expect to eat your cake and keep it too? You must be one thing or the +other; and, though Sandy, here, is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have +disappointed us both miserably--and there's the long and short of it." + +I hid my face in my hands, and sat moodily over the fire; my conscience +told me that I had nothing to answer. + +"Whisht, Johnnie! Ye're ower sair on the lad. He's a' right at heart still, +an he'll do good service. But the deevil a'ways fechts hardest wi' them +he's maist 'feard of. What's this anent agricultural distress ye had to +tell me the noo?" + +"There is a rising down in the country, a friend of mine writes me. The +people are starving, not because bread is dear, but because it's cheap; +and, like sensible men, they're going to have a great meeting, to inquire +the rights and wrong of all that. Now, I want to send a deputation down, to +see how far they are inclined to go, and let them know we up in London are +with them. And then we might get up a corresponding association, you know. +It's a great opening for spreading the principles of the Charter." + +"I sair misdoubt, it's just bread they'll be wanting, they labourers, mair +than liberty. Their God is their belly, I'm thinking, and a verra poor +empty idol he is the noo; sma' burnt offerings and fat o' rams he gets to +propitiate him. But ye might send down a canny body, just to spy out the +nakedness o' the land." + +"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see that I do care for The +Cause. If it's a dangerous mission, so much the better. It will prove my +sincerity. Where is the place?" + +"About ten miles from D * * * *." + +"D * * * *!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot in England! But +it was too late to retract. Sandy saw what was the matter, and tried to +turn the subject; but I was peremptory, almost rude with him. I felt I must +keep up my present excitement, or lose my heart, and my caste, for ever; +and as the hour for the committee was at hand, I jumped up and set off +thither with them, whether they would or not. I heard Sandy whisper to +Crossthwaite, and turned quite fiercely on him. + +"If you want to speak about me, speak out. If you fancy that I shall let my +connexion with that place" (I could not bring myself to name it) "stand in +the way of my duty, you do not know me." + +I announced my intention at the meeting. It was at first received coldly; +but I spoke energetically--perhaps, as some told me afterwards, actually +eloquently. When I got heated, I alluded to my former stay at D * * * *, +and said (while my heart sunk at the bravado which I was uttering) that I +should consider it a glory to retrieve my character with them, and devote +myself to the cause of the oppressed, in the very locality whence had first +arisen their unjust and pardonable suspicions. In short, generous, trusting +hearts as they were, and always are, I talked them round; they shook me by +the hand one by one, bade me God speed, told me that I stood higher than +ever in their eyes, and then set to work to vote money from their funds for +my travelling expenses, which I magnanimously refused, saying that I had a +pound or two left from the sale of my poems, and that I must be allowed, as +an act of repentance and restitution, to devote it to The Cause. + +My triumph was complete. Even O'Flynn, who, like all Irishmen, had plenty +of loose good-nature at bottom, and was as sudden and furious in his loves +as in his hostilities, scrambled over the benches, regardless of patriots' +toes, to shake me violently by the hand, and inform me that I was "a broth +of a boy," and that "any little disagreements between us had vanished like +a passing cloud from the sunshine of our fraternity"--when my eye was +caught by a face which there was no mistaking--my cousin's! + +Yes, there he sat, watching me like a basilisk, with his dark, glittering, +mesmeric eyes, out of a remote corner of the room--not in contempt or +anger, but there was a quiet, assured, sardonic smile about his lips, which +chilled me to the heart. + +The meeting was sufficiently public to allow of his presence, but how had +he found out its existence? Had he come there as a spy on me? Had he been +in the room when my visit to D * * * * was determined on? I trembled at the +thought; and I trembled, too, lest he should be daring enough--and I knew +he could dare anything--to claim acquaintance with me there and then. It +would have ruined my new-restored reputation for ever. But he sat still and +steady: and I had to go through the rest of the evening's business under +the miserable, cramping knowledge that every word and gesture was being +noted down by my most deadly enemy; trembling whenever I was addressed, +lest some chance word of an acquaintance would implicate me still +further--though, indeed, I was deep enough already. The meeting seemed +interminable; and there I fidgeted, with my face scarlet--always seeing +those basilisk eyes upon me--in fancy--for I dared not look again towards +the corner where I knew they were. + +At last it was over--the audience went out; and when I had courage to look +round, my cousin had vanished among them. A load was taken off my breast, +and I breathed freely again--for five minutes;--for I had not made ten +steps up the street, when an arm was familiarly thrust through mine, and I +found myself in the clutches of my evil genius. + +"How are you, my dear fellow? Expected to meet you there. Why, what an +orator you are! Really, I haven't heard more fluent or passionate English +this month of Sundays. You must give me a lesson in sermon-preaching. I can +tell you, we parsons want a hint or two in that line. So you're going down +to D * * * *, to see after those poor starving labourers? 'Pon my honour, +I've a great mind to go with you." + +So, then, he knew all! However, there was nothing for it but to brazen +it out; and, besides, I was in his power, and however hateful to me his +seeming cordiality might be, I dared not offend him at that moment. + +"It would be well if you did. If you parsons would show yourselves at such +places as these a little oftener, you would do more to make the people +believe your mission real, than by all the tracts and sermons in the +world." + +"But, my dear cousin" (and he began to snuffle and sink his voice), "there +is so much sanguinary language, so much unsanctified impatience, you +frighten away all the meek apostolic men among the priesthood--the very +ones who feel most for the lost sheep of the flock. + +"Then the parsons are either great Pharisees or great cowards, or both." + +"Very likely. I was in a precious fright myself, I know, when I saw you +recognized me. If I had not felt strengthened, you know, as of course one +ought to be in all trials, by the sense of my holy calling, I think I +should have bolted at once. However, I took the precaution of bringing my +Bowie and revolver with me, in case the worst came to the worst." + +"And a very needless precaution it was," said I, half laughing at the +quaint incongruity of the priestly and the lay elements in his speech. "You +don't seem to know much of working men's meetings, or working men's morals. +Why, that place was open to all the world. The proceedings will be in the +newspaper to-morrow. The whole bench of bishops might have been there, if +they had chosen; and a great deal of good it would have done them!" + +"I fully agree with you, my dear fellow. No one hates the bishops more than +we true high-churchmen, I can tell you--that's a great point of sympathy +between us and the people. But I must be off. By-the-by, would you like me +to tell our friends at D * * * * that I met you? They often ask after you +in their letters, I assure you." + +This was a sting of complicated bitterness. I felt all that it meant at +once. So he was in constant correspondence with them, while I--and that +thought actually drove out of my head the more pressing danger of his +utterly ruining me in their esteem, by telling them, as he had a very good +right to do, that I was going to preach Chartism to discontented mobs. + +"Ah! well! perhaps you wouldn't wish it mentioned? As you like, you +know. Or, rather," and he laid an iron grasp on my arm, and dropped his +voice--this time in earnest--"as you behave, my wise and loyal cousin! Good +night." + +I went home--the excitement of self-applause, which the meeting had called +up, damped by a strange weight of foreboding. And yet I could not help +laughing, when, just as I was turning into bed, Crossthwaite knocked at +my door, and, on being admitted, handed over to me a bundle wrapped up in +paper. + +"There's a pair of breeks for you--not plush ones, this time, old +fellow--but you ought to look as smart as possible. There's so much in a +man's looking dignified, and all that, when he's speechifying. So I've +just brought you down my best black trousers to travel in. We're just of +a size, you know; little and good, like a Welshman's cow. And if you tear +them, why, we're not like poor, miserable, useless aristocrats; tailors +and sailors can mend their own rents." And he vanished, whistling the +"Marseillaise." + +I went to bed and tossed about, fancying to myself my journey, my speech, +the faces of the meeting, among which Lillian's would rise, in spite of all +the sermons which I preached to myself on the impossibility of her being +there, of my being known, of any harm happening from the movement; but I +could not shake off the fear. If there were a riot, a rising!--If any harm +were to happen to her! If--Till, mobbed into fatigue by a rabble of such +miserable hypothetic ghosts, I fell asleep, to dream that I was going to be +hanged for sedition, and that the mob were all staring and hooting at me, +and Lillian clapping her hands and setting them on; and I woke in an agony, +to find Sandy Mackaye standing by my bedside with a light. + +"Hoolie, laddie! ye need na jump up that way. I'm no' gaun to burke ye the +nicht; but I canna sleep; I'm sair misdoubtful o' the thing. It seems a' +richt, an' I've been praying for us, an' that's mickle for me, to be taught +our way; but I dinna see aught for ye but to gang. If your heart is richt +with God in this matter, then he's o' your side, an' I fear na what men may +do to ye. An' yet, ye're my Joseph, as it were, the son o' my auld age, wi' +a coat o' many colours, plush breeks included; an' gin aught take ye, ye'll +bring down my grey haffets wi' sorrow to the grave!" + +The old man gazed at me as be spoke, with a deep, earnest affection I +had never seen in him before; and the tears glistened in his eyes by the +flaring candlelight, as he went on: + +"I ha' been reading the Bible the nicht. It's strange how the words o't +rise up, and open themselves whiles, to puir distractit bodies; though, +maybe, no' always in just the orthodox way. An' I fell on that, 'Behold +I send ye forth as lambs in the midst o' wolves. Be ye therefore wise as +serpents an' harmless as doves;' an' that gave me comfort, laddie, for ye. +Mind the warning, dinna gang wud, whatever ye may see an' hear; it's an +ill way o' showing pity, to gang daft anent it. Dinna talk magniloquently; +that's the workman's darling sin. An' mind ye dinna go too deep wi' them. +Ye canna trust them to understand ye; they're puir foolish sheep that ha' +no shepherd--swine that ha' no wash, rather. So cast na your pearls before +swine, laddie, lest they trample them under their feet, an' turn again an' +rend ye." + +He went out, and I lay awake tossing till morning, making a thousand good +resolutions--like the rest of mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN. + + +With many instructions from our friends, and warnings from Mackaye, I +started next day on my journey. When I last caught sight of the old man, +he was gazing fixedly after me, and using his pocket-handkerchief in a +somewhat suspicious way. I had remarked how depressed he seemed, and my own +spirits shared the depression. A presentiment of evil hung over me, which +not even the excitement of the journey--to me a rare enjoyment--could +dispel. I had no heart, somehow, to look at the country scenes around, +which in general excited in me so much interest, and I tried to lose myself +in summing up my stock of information on the question which I expected to +hear discussed by the labourers. I found myself not altogether ignorant. +The horrible disclosures of S.G.O., and the barbarous abominations of +the Andover Workhouse, then fresh in the public mind, had had their due +effect on mine; and, like most thinking artizans, I had acquainted myself +tolerably from books and newspapers with the general condition of the +country labourers. + +I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, whose broad brown and +grey fields were only broken by an occasional line of dark, doleful firs, +at a knot of thatched hovels, all sinking and leaning every way but the +right, the windows patched with paper, the doorways stopped with filth, +which surrounded a beer-shop. That was my destination--unpromising enough +for any one but an agitator. If discontent and misery are preparatives for +liberty--and they are--so strange and unlike ours are the ways of God--I +was likely enough to find them there. + +I was welcomed by my intended host, a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker, +who greeted me as his cousin from London--a relationship which it seemed +prudent to accept. + +He took me into his little cabin, and there, with the assistance of a +shrewd, good-natured wife, shared with me the best he had; and after supper +commenced, mysteriously and in trembling, as if the very walls might have +ears, a rambling, bitter diatribe on the wrongs and sufferings of the +labourers; which went on till late in the night, and which I shall spare my +readers: for if they have either brains or hearts, they ought to know more +than I can tell them, from the public prints, and, indeed, from their own +eyes--although, as a wise man says, there is nothing more difficult than to +make people see first the facts which lie under their own nose. + +Upon one point, however, which was new to me, he was very fierce--the +customs of landlords letting the cottages with their farms, for the mere +sake of saving themselves trouble; thus giving up all power of protecting +the poor man, and delivering him over, bound hand and foot, even in the +matter of his commonest home comforts, to farmers, too penurious, too +ignorant, and often too poor, to keep the cottages in a state fit for the +habitation of human beings. Thus the poor man's hovel, as well as his +labour, became, he told me, a source of profit to the farmer, out of which +he wrung the last drop of gain. The necessary repairs were always put +off as long as possible--the labourers were robbed of their gardens--the +slightest rebellion lost them not only work, but shelter from the elements; +the slavery under which they groaned penetrated even to the fireside and to +the bedroom. + +"And who was the landlord of this parish?" + +"Oh! he believed he was a very good sort of man, and uncommon kind to the +people where he lived, but that was fifty miles away in another country; +and he liked that estate better than this, and never came down here, except +for the shooting." + +Full of many thoughts, and tired out with my journey, I went up to bed, in +the same loft with the cobbler and his wife, and fell asleep, and dreamt of +Lillian. + + * * * * * + +About eight o'clock the next morning I started forth with my guide, the +shoemaker, over as desolate a country as men can well conceive. Not a house +was to be seen for miles, except the knot of hovels which we had left, +and here and there a great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard +of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron +above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an +under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind, +which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and +crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only +trees in sight. + +We trudged on, over wide stubbles, with innumerable weeds; over wide +fallows, in which the deserted ploughs stood frozen fast; then over clover +and grass, burnt black with frost; then over a field of turnips, where we +passed a large fold of hurdles, within which some hundred sheep stood, with +their heads turned from the cutting blast. All was dreary, idle, silent; +no sound or sign of human beings. One wondered where the people lived, who +cultivated so vast a tract of civilized, over-peopled, nineteenth-century +England. As we came up to the fold, two little boys hailed us from the +inside--two little wretches with blue noses and white cheeks, scarecrows of +rags and patches, their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice too big +for them, who seemed to have shared between them a ragged pair of worsted +gloves, and cowered among the sheep, under the shelter of a hurdle, crying +and inarticulate with cold. + +"What's the matter, boys?" + +"Turmits is froze, and us can't turn the handle of the cutter. Do ye gie us +a turn, please?" + +We scrambled over the hurdles, and gave the miserable little creatures the +benefit of ten minutes' labour. They seemed too small for such exertion: +their little hands were purple with chilblains, and they were so sorefooted +they could scarcely limp. I was surprised to find them at least three years +older than their size and looks denoted, and still more surprised, too, to +find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the elements--such +as I believe I could not have endured two days running--was the vast sum +of one shilling a week each, Sundays included. "They didn't never go to +school, nor to church nether, except just now and then, sometimes--they had +to mind the shop." + +I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-bred, over-fed, +fat, thick-woolled animals, with their troughs of turnips and malt-dust, +and their racks of rich clover-hay, and their little pent-house of +rock-salt, having nothing to do but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and +the little half-starved shivering animals who were their slaves. Man +the master of the brutes? Bah! As society is now, the brutes are the +masters--the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and the labourer +is their slave. "Oh! but the brutes are eaten!" Well; the horses at least +are not eaten--they live, like landlords, till they die. And those who are +eaten, are certainly not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat, +another kills, to parody Shelley; and, after all, is not the labourer, as +well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society?--devoured body and soul, +not the less really because you are longer about the meal, there being an +old prejudice against cannibalism, and also against murder--except after +the Riot Act has been read. + +"What!" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have we not paid him his +wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?" Yes; and have you not given +your sheep and horses their daily wages, and have they not lived on them? +You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you know, unless they +were alive. But here lies your iniquity: you gave the labourer nothing but +his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their +wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your +competitive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously +(for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?) +to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the +possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital +profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of +daily comforts; but what has he saved?--what is he profited by all those +years of labour? He has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could +have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every +Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole +real profits of his nearly fifty years' labour, and he has nothing. And +then you say that you have not eaten him! You know, in your heart of +hearts, that you have. Else, why in Heaven's name do you pay him poor's +rates? If, as you say, he has been duly repaid in wages, what is the +meaning of that half-a-crown a week?--you owe him nothing. Oh! but the man +would starve--common humanity forbids? What now, Society? Give him alms, if +you will, on the score of humanity; but do not tax people for his support, +whether they choose or not--that were a mere tyranny and robbery. If the +landlord's feelings will not allow him to see the labourer starve, let +him give, in God's name; but let him not cripple and drain, by compulsory +poor-rates, the farmer who has paid him his "just remuneration" of wages, +and the parson who probably, out of his scanty income, gives away twice as +much in alms as the landlord does out of his superfluous one. No, no; as +long as you retain compulsory poor-laws, you confess that it is not merely +humane, but just, to pay the labourer more than his wages. You confess +yourself in debt to him, over and above an uncertain sum, which it suits +you not to define, because such an investigation would expose ugly gaps and +patches in that same snug competitive and property world of yours; and, +therefore, being the stronger party, you compel your debtor to give up the +claim which you confess, for an annuity of half-a-crown a week--that being +the just-above-starving-point of the economic thermometer. And yet you say +you have not eaten the labourer! You see, we workmen too have our thoughts +about political economy, differing slightly from yours, truly--just as the +man who is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the process +from the man who is hanging him. Which view is likely to be the more +practical one? + +With some such thoughts I walked across the open down, toward a circular +camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town. Inside it, some +thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single +large block of stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood, +his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky. As we +pushed through the crowd, I was struck with the wan, haggard look of all +faces; their lacklustre eyes and drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy, +dragging steps, gave them a crushed, dogged air, which was infinitely +painful, and bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than +that of the excitable and passionate artisan. + +There were many women among them, talking shrilly, and looking even more +pinched and wan than the men. + +I remarked, also, that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, pitchforks, +and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons--an ugly sign, which +I ought to have heeded betimes. + +They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with +no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the +stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His +words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like +eloquence or imagination--a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints, +which derived their force only from the intense earnestness, which attested +their truthfulness. As far as I can recollect, I will give the substance of +what I heard. But, indeed, I heard nothing but what has been bandied about +from newspaper to newspaper for years--confessed by all parties, deplored +by all parties, but never an attempt made to remedy it. + +--"The farmers makes slaves on us. I can't hear no difference between a +Christian and a nigger, except they flogs the niggers and starves the +Christians; and I don't know which I'd choose. I served Farmer * * * * +seven year, off and on, and arter harvest he tells me he's no more work +for me, nor my boy nether, acause he's getting too big for him, so he gets +a little 'un instead, and we does nothing; and my boy lies about, getting +into bad ways, like hundreds more; and then we goes to board, and they bids +us go and look for work; and we goes up next part to London. I couldn't +get none; they'd enough to do, they said, to employ their own; and we +begs our way home, and goes into the Union; and they turns us out again +in two or three days, and promises us work again, and gives us two days' +gravel-picking, and then says they has no more for us; and we was sore +pinched, and laid a-bed all day; then next board-day we goes to 'em and +they gives us one day more--and that threw us off another week, and then +next board-day we goes into the Union again for three days, and gets sent +out again: and so I've been starving one-half of the time, and they putting +us off and on o' purpose like that; and I'll bear it no longer, and that's +what I says." + +He came down, and a tall, powerful, well-fed man, evidently in his Sunday +smock-frock and clean yellow leggings, got up and began: + +"I hav'n't no complaint to make about myself. I've a good master, and +the parson's a right kind 'un, and that's more than all can say, and the +squire's a real gentleman; and my master, he don't need to lower his wages. +I gets my ten shillings a week all the year round, and harvesting, and a +pig, and a 'lotment--and that's just why I come here. If I can get it, why +can't you?" + +"Cause our masters baint like yourn." + +"No, by George, there baint no money round here like that, I can tell you." + +"And why ain't they?" continued the speaker. "There's the shame on it. +There's my master can grow five quarters where yourn only grows three; and +so he can live and pay like a man; and so he say he don't care for free +trade. You know, as well as I, that there's not half o' the land round here +grows what it ought. They ain't no money to make it grow more, and besides, +they won't employ no hands to keep it clean. I come across more weeds in +one field here, than I've seen for nine year on our farm. Why arn't some of +you a-getting they weeds up? It 'ud pay 'em to farm better--and they knows +that, but they're too lazy; if they can just get a living off the land, +they don't care; and they'd sooner save money out of your wages, than save +it by growing more corn--it's easier for 'em, it is. There's the work to +be done, and they won't let you do it. There's you crying out for work, +and work crying out for you--and neither of you can get to the other. I +say that's a shame, I do. I say a poor man's a slave. He daren't leave his +parish--nobody won't employ him, as can employ his own folk. And if he +stays in his parish, it's just a chance whether he gets a good master or +a bad 'un. He can't choose, and that's a shame, it is. Why should he go +starving because his master don't care to do the best by the land? If they +can't till the land, I say let them get out of it, and let them work it as +can. And I think as we ought all to sign a petition to government, to tell +'em all about it; though I don't see as how they could help us, unless +they'd make a law to force the squires to put in nobody to a farm as hasn't +money to work it fairly." + +"I says," said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sentences were +continually broken by a hacking cough, "just what he said. If they can't +till the land, let them do it as can. But they won't; they won't let us +have a scrap on it, though we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make +for themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent, if we had an +acre or so o' land; and so it 'ud for they. And so I says as he did--they +want to make slaves on us altogether, just to get the flesh and bones off +us at their own price. Look you at this here down.--If I had an acre on it, +to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this +here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now. +And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and +I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few +potatoes--and he says, 'You be d--d! If you're minding your garden after +hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me in hours--and I +shall want you by-and-by, when the weather breaks'--for it was frost most +bitter, it was. 'And if you gets potatoes you'll be getting a pig--and then +you'll want straw, and meal to fat 'un--and then I'll not trust you in +my barn, I can tell ye;' and so there it was. And if I'd had only one +half-acre of this here very down as we stands on, as isn't worth five +shillings a year--and I'd a given ten shillings for it--my belly wouldn't a +been empty now. Oh, they be dogs in the manger, and the Lord'll reward 'em +therefor! First they says they can't afford to work the land 'emselves, and +then they wain't let us work it ether. Then they says prices is so low they +can't keep us on, and so they lowers our wages; and then when prices goes +up ever so much, our wages don't go up with 'em. So, high prices or low +prices, it's all the same. With the one we can't buy bread, and with the +other we can't get work. I don't mind free trade--not I: to be sure, if +the loaf's cheap, we shall be ruined; but if the loafs dear, we shall be +starved, and for that, we is starved now. Nobody don't care for us; for my +part, I don't much care for myself. A man must die some time or other. Only +I thinks if we could some time or other just see the Queen once, and tell +her all about it, she'd take our part, and not see us put upon like that, I +do." + +"Gentlemen!" cried my guide, the shoemaker, in a somewhat conceited and +dictatorial tone, as he skipped up by the speaker's side, and gently +shouldered him down--"it ain't like the ancient times, as I've read off, +when any poor man as had a petition could come promiscuously to the King's +royal presence, and put it direct into his own hand, and be treated like a +gentleman. Don't you know as how they locks up the Queen now-a-days, and +never lets a poor soul come a-near her, lest she should hear the truth +of all their iniquities? Why they never lets her stir without a lot o' +dragoons with drawn swords riding all around her; and if you dared to go +up to her to ax mercy, whoot! they'd chop your head off before you could +say, 'Please your Majesty.' And then the hypocrites say as it's to keep her +from being frightened--and that's true--for it's frightened she'd be, with +a vengeance, if she knowed all that they grand folks make poor labourers +suffer, to keep themselves in power and great glory. I tell ye, 'tarn't +per-practicable at all, to ax the Queen for anything; she's afeard of +her life on 'em. You just take my advice, and sign a round-robin to the +squires--you tell 'em as you're willing to till the land for 'em, if +they'll let you. There's draining and digging enough to be done as 'ud keep +ye all in work, arn't there?" + +"Ay, ay; there's lots o' work to be done, if so be we could get at it. +Everybody knows that." + +"Well, you tell 'em that. Tell 'em here's hundreds, and hundreds of ye +starving, and willing to work; and then tell 'em, if they won't find ye +work, they shall find ye meat. There's lots o' victuals in their larders +now; haven't you as good a right to it as their jackanapes o' footmen? The +squires is at the bottom of it all. What do you stupid fellows go grumbling +at the farmers for? Don't they squires tax the land twenty or thirty +shillings an acre; and what do they do for that? The best of 'em, if he +gets five thousand a year out o' the land, don't give back five hundred in +charity, or schools, or poor-rates--and what's that to speak of? And the +main of 'em--curse 'em!--they drains the money out o' the land, and takes +it up to London, or into foreign parts, to spend on fine clothes and fine +dinners; or throws it away at elections, to make folks beastly drunk, and +sell their souls for money--and we gets no good on it. I'll tell you what +it's come to, my men--that we can't afford no more landlords. We can't +afford 'em, and that's the truth of it!" + +The crowd growled a dubious assent. + +"Oh, yes, you can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them +first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an +old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt +politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans +of it. Look you here. The farmers, they say they can't live unless they can +make four rents, one for labour, and one for stock, and one for rent, and +one for themselves; ain't that about right? Very well; just now they can't +make four rents--in course they can't. Now, who's to suffer for that?--the +farmer as works, or the labourer as works, or the landlord as does nothing? +But he takes care on himself. He won't give up his rent--not he. Perhaps +he might give back ten per cent, and what's that?--two shillings an acre, +maybe. What's that, if corn falls two pound a load, and more? Then the +farmer gets a stinting; and he can't stint hisself, he's bad enough off +already; he's forty shillings out o' pocket on every load of wheat--that's +eight shillings, maybe, on every acre of his land on a four-course +shift--and where's the eight shillings to come from, for the landlord's +only given him back two on it? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint +his stock, and so he stints the labourers; and so it's you as pays the +landlord's rent--you, my boys, out o' your flesh and bones, you do--and you +can't afford it any longer, by the look of you--so just tell 'em so!" + +This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest. In short, there +seemed to be no hope, no purpose among them--and they felt it; and I could +hear, from the running comment of murmurs, that they were getting every +moment more fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own +helplessness--a mood which the next speech was not likely to soften. + +A pale, thin woman scrambled up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty +and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face +sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a +querulous, 'scornful falsetto: + +"I am an honest woman. I brought up seven children decently; and never axed +the parish for a farden, till my husband died. Then they tells me I can +support myself and mine--and so I does. Early and late I hoed turmits, and +early and late I rep, and left the children at home to mind each other; and +one on 'em fell into the fire, and is gone to heaven, blessed angel! and +two more it pleased the Lord to take in the fever; and the next, I hope, +will soon be out o' this miserable sinful world. But look you here: three +weeks agone, I goes to the board. I had no work. They say they could not +relieve me for the first week, because I had money yet to take.--The +hypocrites! they knowing as I couldn't but owe it all, and a lot more +beside. Next week they sends the officer to inquire. That was ten days +gone, and we starving. Then, on board-day, they gives me two loaves. Then, +next week, they takes it off again. And when I goes over (five miles) to +the board to ax why--they'd find me work--and they never did; so we goes +on starving for another week--for no one wouldn't trust us; how could they +when we was in debt already a whole lot?--you're all in debt!" + +"That we are." + +"There's some here as never made ten shillings a week in their lives, as +owes twenty pounds at the shop!" + +"Ay, and more--and how's a man ever to pay that?" + +"So this week, when I comes, they offers me the house. Would I go into +the house? They'd be glad to have me, acause I'm strong and hearty and a +good nurse. But would I, that am an honest woman, go to live with they +offscourings--they"--(she used a strong word)--"would I be parted from my +children? Would I let them hear the talk, and keep the company as they will +there, and learn all sorts o' sins that they never heard on, blessed be +God! I'll starve first, and see them starve too--though, Lord knows, it's +hard.--Oh! it's hard," she said, bursting into tears, "to leave them as I +did this morning, crying after their breakfasts, and I none to give 'em. +I've got no bread--where should I? I've got no fire--how can I give one +shilling and sixpence a hundred for coals? And if I did, who'd fetch 'em +home? And if I dared break a hedge for a knitch o' wood, they'd put me in +prison, they would, with the worst. What be I to do? What be you going to +do? That's what I came here for. What be ye going to do for us women--us +that starve and stint, and wear our hands off for you men and your +children, and get hard words, and hard blows from you? Oh! if I was a man, +I know what I'd do, I do! But I don't think you be men three parts o' you, +or you'd not see the widow and the orphan starve as you do, and sit quiet +and grumble, as long as you can keep your own bodies and souls together. +Eh! ye cowards!" + +What more she would have said in her excitement, which had risen to an +absolute scream, I cannot tell; but some prudent friend pulled her down off +the stone, to be succeeded by a speaker more painful, if possible; an aged +blind man, the worn-out melancholy of whose slow, feeble voice made my +heart sink, and hushed the murmuring crowd into silent awe. + +Slowly he turned his grey, sightless head from side to side, as if feeling +for the faces below him--and then began: + +"I heard you was all to be here--and I suppose you are; and I said I would +come--though I suppose they'll take off my pay, if they hear of it. But I +knows the reason of it, and the bad times and all. The Lord revealed it to +me as clear as day, four years agone come Easter-tide. It's all along of +our sins, and our wickedness--because we forgot Him--it is. I mind the old +war times, what times they was, when there was smuggled brandy up and down +in every public, and work more than hands could do. And then, how we all +forgot the Lord, and went after our own lusts and pleasures--squires and +parsons, and farmers and labouring folk, all alike. They oughted to +ha' knowed better--and we oughted too. Many's the Sunday I spent in +skittle-playing and cock-fighting, and the pound I spent in beer, as might +ha' been keeping me now. We was an evil and perverse generation--and so one +o' my sons went for a sodger, and was shot at Waterloo, and the other fell +into evil ways, and got sent across seas--and I be left alone for my +sins. But the Lord was very gracious to me and showed me how it was all a +judgment on my sins, he did. He has turned his face from us, and that's why +we're troubled. And so I don't see no use in this meeting. It won't do no +good; nothing won't do us no good, unless we all repent of our wicked ways, +our drinking, and our dirt, and our love-children, and our picking and +stealing, and gets the Lord to turn our hearts, and to come back again, and +have mercy on us, and take us away speedily out of this wretched world, +where there's nothing but misery and sorrow, into His everlasting glory, +Amen! Folks say as the day of judgment's a coming soon--and I partly think +so myself. I wish it was all over, and we in heaven above; and that's all I +have to say." + +It seemed a not unnatural revulsion, when a tall, fierce man, with a +forbidding squint, sprung jauntily on the stone, and setting his arms +a-kimbo, broke out: + +"Here be I, Blinkey, and I has as good a right to speak as ere a one. +You're all blamed fools, you are. So's that old blind buffer there. You +sticks like pigs in a gate, hollering and squeeking, and never helping +yourselves. Why can't you do like me? I never does no work--darned if I'll +work to please the farmers. The rich folks robs me, and I robs them, +and that's fair and equal. You only turn poachers--you only go stealing +turmits, and fire-ud, and all as you can find--and then you'll not need to +work. Arn't it yourn? The game's no one's, is it now?--you know that. And +if you takes turmits or corn, they're yourn--you helped to grow 'em. And +if you're put to prison, I tell ye, it's a darned deal warmer, and better +victuals too, than ever a one of you gets at home, let alone the Union. +Now I knows the dodge. Whenever my wife's ready for her trouble, I gets +cotched; then I lives like a prince in gaol, and she goes to the workus; +and when it's all over, start fair again. Oh, you blockheads'--to stand +here shivering with empty bellies.--You just go down to the farm and burn +they stacks over the old rascal's head; and then they that let you starve +now, will be forced to keep you then. If you can't get your share of the +poor-rates, try the county-rates, my bucks--you can get fat on them at the +Queen's expense--and that's more than you'll do in ever a Union as I hear +on. Who'll come down and pull the farm about the folks' ears? Warn't he as +turned five on yer off last week? and ain't he more corn there than 'ud +feed you all round this day, and won't sell it, just because he's +waiting till folks are starved enough, and prices rise? Curse the old +villain!--who'll help to disappoint him 'o that? Come along!" + +A confused murmur arose, and a movement in the crowd. I felt that now or +never was the time to speak. If once the spirit of mad aimless riot broke +loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of +being implicated in deeds which I abhorred; and I sprung on the stone and +entreated a few minutes' attention, telling them that I was a deputation +from one of the London Chartist committees. This seemed to turn the stream +of their thoughts, and they gaped in stupid wonder at me as I began hardly +less excited than themselves. + +I assured them of the sympathy of the London working men, made a comment +on their own speeches--which the reader ought to be able to make for +himself--and told them that I had come to entreat their assistance towards +obtaining such a parliamentary representation as would secure them their +rights. I explained the idea of the Charter, and begged for their help in +carrying it out. + +To all which they answered surlily, that they did not know anything about +politics--that what they wanted was bread. + +I went on, more vehement than ever, to show them how all their misery +sprung (as I then fancied) from being unrepresented--how the laws were made +by the rich for the poor, and not by all for all--how the taxes bit deep +into the necessaries of the labourer, and only nibbled at the luxuries of +the rich--how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which +the poor were prone, while it dared not interfere with the subtler +iniquities of the high-born and wealthy--how poor-rates, as I have just +said, were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not +fully remunerated. I tried to make them see that their interest, as much as +common justice, demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of +the nation, such as would truly proclaim their wants, their rights, their +wrongs; and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words. + +To all which they answered, that their stomachs were empty, and they wanted +bread. "And bread we will have!" + +"Go, then," I cried, losing my self-possession between disappointment and +the maddening desire of influence--and, indeed, who could hear their story, +or even look upon their faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him. +unless self-interest had drugged his heart and conscience--"go," I cried, +"and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. No man is bound to +starve. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one. Laws +were made for man, not man for laws. If you had made the laws yourselves, +they might bind you even in this extremity; but they were made in spite of +you--against you. They rob you, crash you; even now they deny you bread. +God has made the earth free to all, like the air and sunshine, and you are +shut out from off it. The earth is yours, for you till it. Without you it +would be a desert. Go and demand your share of that corn, the fruit of your +own industry. What matter, if your tyrants imprison, murder you?--they can +but kill your bodies at once, instead of killing them piecemeal, as they do +now; and your blood will cry against them from the ground:--Ay, Woe!"--I +went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, +however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in +them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene +self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it--"Woe unto those that grind the +faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to +field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the +poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back by fraud, +cry out against them; and their cry has entered into the ears of the God of +heaven--" + +But I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread! +Bread!" My hearers had taken me at my word. I had raised the spirit; could +I command him, now he was abroad? + +"Go to Jennings's farm!" + +"No! he ain't no corn, he sold un' all last week." + +"There's plenty at the Hall farm! Rouse out the old steward!" + +And, amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill, +sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats. +I tried again and again to stop and harangue them. I shouted myself hoarse +about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence; +entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed; +but my voice was drowned in the uproar. Still I felt myself in a measure +responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not, +in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the +worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the +point of a pitchfork. + +Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palings, we entered a wide, +rushy, neglected park, and along an old gravel road, now green with grass, +we opened on a sheet of frozen water, and, on the opposite bank, the huge +square corpse of a hall, the close-shuttered windows of which gave it a +dead and ghastly look, except where here and there a single one showed, as +through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfurnished rooms within. On the +right, beneath us, lay, amid tall elms, a large mass of farm-buildings, +into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously--just in time to +see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park, amid +the yells of the mob. + +"The old rascal's gone! and he'll call up the yeomanry. We must be quick, +boys!" shouted one, and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an +indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys; while a +few of the more steady went up to the house-door, and knocking, demanded +sternly the granary keys. + +A fat virago planted herself in the doorway, and commenced railing at them, +with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their sex gives +to coarse women; but she was hastily shoved aside, and took shelter in an +upper room, where she stood screaming and cursing at the window. + +The invaders returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping +asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the +contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It +was a sad sight. Here was a poor shivering woman, hiding scraps of food +under her cloak, and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had +left at home. There was a tall man, leaning against the palings, gnawing +ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy, who had scrambled up behind +him. Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me, with a can of ale. +"Drink, my beauty! you're dry with hollering by now!" + +"The ale is neither yours nor mine; I won't touch it." + +"Darn your buttons! You said the wheat was ourn, acause we growed it--and +thereby so's the beer--for we growed the barley too." + +And so thought the rest; for the yard was getting full of drunkards, a +woman or two among them, reeling knee-deep in the loose straw among the +pigs. + +"Thresh out they ricks!" roared another. + +"Get out the threshing-machine!" + +"You harness the horses!" + +"No! there bain't no time. Yeomanry'll be here. You mun leave the ricks." + +"Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get naught by they." + +"Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's farm!" + +"As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed +through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my +face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in +time to here a crackle--there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was +in a blaze of fire. + +I stood awe-struck--I cannot tell how long--watching how the live +flame-snakes crept and hissed, and leapt and roared, and rushed in long +horizontal jets from stack to stack before the howling wind, and fastened +their fiery talons on the barn-eaves, and swept over the peaked roofs, and +hurled themselves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond--the food of man, +the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin!--Was it my doing? Was it +not? + +At last I recollected myself, and ran round again into the straw-yard, +where the fire was now falling fast. The only thing which saved the house +was the weltering mass of bullocks, pigs, and human beings drunk and sober, +which, trampled out unwittingly the flames as fast as they caught. + +The fire had seized the roofs of the cart-stables, when a great lubberly +boy blubbered out:-- + +"Git my horses out! git my horses out o' the fire! I be so fond o' mun!" + +"Well, they ain't done no harm, poor beasts!" And a dozen men ran in to +save them; but the poor wretches, screaming with terror, refused to stir. I +never knew what became of them-but their shrieks still haunt my dreams.... + +The yard now became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob--and +alas! there were but too many of them--hurled the furniture out of the +windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I +expostulated, threatened; I was answered by laughter, curses, frantic +dances, and brandished plunder. Then I first found out how large a portion +of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd; and at the +moment, I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers, in +indignation at the rascals. But even the really starving majority, whose +faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery, seemed gone mad for the +moment. The old crust of sullen, dogged patience had broken up, and their +whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge--and yet +there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman, who, surrounded +with her blubbering children, stood screaming and cursing at the +first-floor window, getting redder and fatter at every scream. The worst +personality she heard was a roar of laughter, in which, such is poor +humanity, I could not but join, as her little starved drab of a +maid-of-all-work ran out of the door, with a bundle of stolen finery under +her arm, and high above the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the +rioters, rose her mistress's yell. + +"O Betsy! Betsy! you little awdacious unremorseful hussy!--a running away +with my best bonnet and shawl!" + +The laughter soon, however, subsided, when a man rushed breathless into the +yard, shouting, "The yeomanry!" + +At that sound; to my astonishment, a general panic ensued. The miserable +wretches never stopped to enquire how many, or how far off, they were--but +scrambled to every outlet of the yard, trampling each other down in their +hurry. I leaped up on the wall, and saw, galloping down the park, a mighty +armament of some fifteen men, with a tall officer at their head, mounted on +a splendid horse. + +"There they be! there they be! all the varmers, and young Squire Clayton +wi' mun, on his grey hunter! O Lord! O Lord! and all their swords drawn!" + +I thought of the old story in Herodotus--how the Scythian masters returned +from war to the rebel slaves who had taken possession of their lands and +wives, and brought them down on their knees with terror, at the mere sight +of the old dreaded dog-whips. + +I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed with +myself--the people. I longed, for the moment, to die and leave it all; and +left almost alone, sat down on a stone, buried my head between my hands, +and tried vainly to shut out from my ears the roaring of the fire. + +At that moment "Blinkey" staggered out past me and against me, a +writing-desk in his hands, shouting, in his drunken glory, "I've vound ut +at last! I've got the old fellow's money! Hush! What a vule I be, hollering +like that!"--And he was going to sneak off, with a face of drunken cunning, +when I sprung up and seized him by the throat. + +"Rascal! robber! lay that down! Have you not done mischief enough already?" + +"I wain't have no sharing. What? Do you want un yourself, eh? Then we'll +see who's the stronger!" + +And in an instant he shook me from him, and dealt me a blow with the corner +of the desk, that laid me on the ground.... + +I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and the gleam and jingle +of their arms, as they galloped into the yard. I caught a glimpse of the +tall young officer, as his great grey horse swept through the air, over +the high yard-pales--a feat to me utterly astonishing. Half a dozen long +strides--the wretched ruffian, staggering across the field with his booty, +was caught up.--The clear blade gleamed in the air--and then a fearful +yell--and after that I recollect nothing. + + * * * * * + +Slowly I recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a truckle-bed--stone +walls and a grated window! A man stood over me with a large bunch of +keys in his hand. He had been wrapping my head with wet towels. I knew, +instinctively, where I was. + +"Well, young man," said he, in a not unkindly tone--"and a nice job you've +made of it! Do you know where you are?". + +"Yes," answered I, quietly; "in D * * * * gaol." + +"Exactly so!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +THE TRIAL. + + +The day was come--quickly, thank Heaven; and I stood at the bar, with four +or five miserable, haggard labourers, to take my trial for sedition, riot, +and arson. + +I had passed the intervening weeks half stupified with the despair of +utter disappointment; disappointment at myself and my own loss of +self-possession, which had caused all my misfortune,--perhaps, too, and the +thought was dreadful, that of my wretched fellow-sufferers:--disappointment +with the labourers, with The Cause; and when the thought came over me, in +addition, that I was irreparably disgraced in the eyes of my late patrons, +parted for ever from Lillian by my own folly, I laid down my head and +longed to die. + +Then, again, I would recover awhile, and pluck up heart. I would plead my +cause myself--I would testify against the tyrants to their face--I would +say no longer to their besotted slaves, but to the men themselves, "Go to, +ye rich men, weep and howl! The hire of your labourers who have reaped down +your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of +them that have reaped hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Hosts." +I would brave my fate--I would die protesting, and glory in my martyrdom. +But-- + +"Martyrdom?" said Mackaye, who had come down to D * * * *, and was busy +night and day about my trial. "Ye'll just leave alone the martyr dodge, my +puir bairn. Ye're na martyr at a', ye'll understand, but a vera foolish +callant, that lost his temper, an' cast his pearls before swine--an' very +questionable pearls they, too, to judge by the price they fetch i' the +market." + +And then my heart sank again. And a few days before the trial a letter +came, evidently in my cousin's handwriting, though only signed with his +initials: + +"SIR,--You are in a very great scrape--you will not deny that. How you +will get out of it depends on your own common sense. You probably won't be +hanged--for nobody believes that you had a hand in burning the farm; but, +unless you take care, you will be transported. Call yourself John Nokes; +entrust your case to a clever lawyer, and keep in the background. I warn +you, as a friend--if you try to speechify, and play the martyr, and let out +who you are, the respectable people who have been patronizing you will find +it necessary for their own sakes to clap a stopper on you for good and all, +to make you out an impostor and a swindler, and get you out of the way for +life: while, if you are quiet, it will suit them to be quiet too, and say +nothing about you, if you say nothing about them; and then there will be a +chance that they, as well as your own family, will do everything in their +power to hush the matter up. So, again, don't let out your real name; and +instruct your lawyers to know nothing about the W.'s; and then, perhaps, +the Queen's counsel will know nothing about them either. Mind--you are +warned, and woe to you if you are fool enough not to take the warning. + +"G.L." + +Plead in a false name! Never, so help me Heaven! To go into court with a +lie in my mouth--to make myself an impostor--probably a detected one--it +seemed the most cunning scheme for ruining me, which my evil genius could +have suggested, whether or not it might serve his own selfish ends. But as +for the other hints, they seemed not unreasonable, and promised to save me +trouble; while the continued pressure of anxiety and responsibility was +getting intolerable to my over-wearied brain. So I showed the letter to +Mackaye, who then told me that he had taken it for granted that I should +come to my right mind, and had therefore already engaged an old compatriot +as attorney, and the best counsel which money could procure. + +"But where did you get the money? You have not surely been spending your +own savings on me?" + +"I canna say that I wadna ha' so dune, in case o' need. But the men in town +just subscribit; puir honest fellows." + +"What! is my folly to be the cause of robbing them of their slender +earnings? Never, Mackaye! Besides, they cannot have subscribed enough to +pay the barrister whom you just mentioned. Tell me the whole truth, or, +positively, I will plead my cause myself." + +"Aweel, then, there was a bit bank-note or twa cam' to hand--I canna say +whaur fra'. But they that sent it direckit it to be expendit in the defence +o' the sax prisoners--whereof ye make ane." + +Again a world of fruitless conjecture. It must be the same unknown friend +who had paid my debt to my cousin--Lillian? + + * * * * * + +And so the day was come. I am not going to make a long picturesque +description of my trial--trials have become lately quite hackneyed +subjects, stock properties for the fiction-mongers--neither, indeed, +could I do so, if I would. I recollect nothing of that day, but +fragments--flashes of waking existence, scattered up and down in what +seemed to me a whole life of heavy, confused, painful dreams, with the +glare of all those faces concentrated on me--those countless eyes which +I could not, could not meet--stony, careless, unsympathizing--not even +angry--only curious. If they had but frowned on me, insulted me, gnashed +their teeth on me, I could have glared back defiance; as it was, I stood +cowed and stupified, a craven by the side of cravens. + +Let me see--what can I recollect? Those faces--faces--everywhere faces--a +faint, sickly smell of flowers--a perpetual whispering and rustling of +dresses--and all through it, the voice of some one talking, talking--I +seldom knew what, or whether it was counsel, witness, judge, or prisoner, +that was speaking. I was like one asleep at a foolish lecture, who hears in +dreams, and only wakes when the prosing stops. Was it not prosing? What +was it to me what they said? They could not understand me--my motives--my +excuses; the whole pleading, on my side as well as the crown's, seemed one +huge fallacy--beside the matter altogether--never touching the real point +at issue, the eternal moral equity of my deeds or misdeeds. I had no doubt +that it would all be conducted quite properly, and fairly, and according to +the forms of law; but what was law to me--I wanted justice. And so I let +them go on their own way, conscious of but one thought--was Lillian in the +court? + +I dared not look and see. I dared not lift up my eyes toward the gaudy +rows of ladies who had crowded to the "interesting trial of the D * * * * +rioters." The torture of anxiety was less than that of certainty might be, +and I kept my eyes down, and wondered how on earth the attorneys had found +in so simple a case enough to stuff those great blue bags. + +When, however, anything did seem likely to touch on a reality, I woke up +forthwith, in spite of myself. I recollect well, for instance, a squabble +about challenging the jurymen; and my counsel's voice of pious indignation, +as he asked, "Do you call these agricultural gentlemen, and farmers, +however excellent and respectable--on which point Heaven forbid that I, +&c., &c.--the prisoner's 'pares,' peers, equals, or likes? What single +interest, opinion, or motive, have they in common, but the universal one +of self-interest, which, in this case, happens to pull in exactly opposite +directions? Your Lordship has often animadverted fully and boldly on the +practice of allowing a bench of squires to sit in judgment on a poacher; +surely it is quite as unjust that agricultural rioters should be tried by a +jury of the very class against whom they are accused of rebelling." + +"Perhaps my learned brother would like a jury of rioters?" suggested some +Queen's counsel. + +"Upon my word, then, it would be much the fairer plan." + +I wondered whether he would have dared to say as much in the street +outside--and relapsed into indifference. I believe there was some long +delay, and wrangling about law-quibbles, which seemed likely at one time to +quash the whole prosecution, but I was rather glad than sorry to find +that it had been overruled. It was all a play, a game of bowls--the +bowls happening to be human heads--got up between the lawyers, for the +edification of society; and it would have been a pity not to play it out, +according to the rules and regulations thereof. + +As for the evidence, its tenor may be easily supposed from my story. +There were those who could swear to my language at the camp. I was seen +accompanying the mob to the farm, and haranguing them. The noise was too +great for the witnesses to hear all I said, but they were certain I talked +about the sacred name of liberty. The farmer's wife had seen me run round +to the stacks when they were fired--whether just before or just after, she +never mentioned. She had seen me running up and down in front of the house, +talking loudly, and gesticulating violently; she saw me, too, struggling +with another rioter for her husband's desk;--and the rest of the witnesses, +some of whom I am certain I had seen, busy plundering, though they were +ready to swear that they had been merely accidental passers-by, seemed +to think that they proved their own innocence, and testified their pious +indignation, by avoiding carefully any fact which could excuse me. But, +somehow, my counsel thought differently; and cross-examined, and bullied, +and tormented, and misstated--as he was bound to do; and so one witness +after another, clumsy and cowardly enough already, was driven by his +engines of torture, as if by a pitiless spell, to deny half that he had +deposed truly, and confess a great deal that was utterly false--till +confusion became worse confounded, and there seemed no truth anywhere, +and no falsehood either, and "naught was everything, and everything was +naught;" till I began to have doubts whether the riot had ever occurred +at all--and, indeed, doubts of my own identity also, when I had heard the +counsel for the crown impute to me personally, as in duty bound, every +seditious atrocity which, had been committed either in England or France +since 1793. To him, certainly, I did listen tolerably; it was "as good as a +play." Atheism, blasphemy, vitriol-throwing, and community of women, were +among my lighter offences--for had I not actually been engaged in a plot +for the destruction of property? How did the court know that I had not +spent the night before the riot, as "the doctor" and his friends did before +the riots of 1839, in drawing lots for the estates of the surrounding +gentlemen, with my deluded dupes and victims?--for of course I, and not +want of work, had deluded them into rioting; at least, they never would +have known that they were starving, if I had not stirred up their evil +passions by daring to inform them of that otherwise impalpable fact. I, the +only Chartist there? Might there not have been dozens of them?--emissaries +from London, dressed up as starving labourers, and rheumatic old women? +There were actually traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the +country, and setting up a seraglio of them in D * * * * Cathedral. How did +the court know that there was not one? + +Ay, how indeed? and how did I know either? I really began to question +whether the man might not be right after all. The whole theory seemed +so horribly coherent--possible, natural. I might have done it, under +possession of the devil, and forgotten it in excitement--I might--perhaps +I did. And if there, why not elsewhere? Perhaps I had helped Jourdan +Coupe-tete at Lyons, and been king of the Munster Anabaptists--why not? +What matter? When would this eternity of wigs, and bonnets, and glaring +windows, and ear-grinding prate and jargon, as of a diabolic universe of +street organs, end--end--end--and I get quietly hanged, and done with it +all for ever? + +Oh, the horrible length of that day! It seemed to me as if I had been +always on my trial, ever since I was born. I wondered at times how +many years ago it had all begun. I felt what a far stronger and more +single-hearted patriot than I, poor Somerville, says of himself under the +torture of the sergeant's cat, in a passage, whose horrible simplicity and +unconscious pathos have haunted me ever since I read it; how, when only +fifty out of his hundred lashes had fallen on the bleeding back, "_The time +since they began was like a long period of life: I felt as if I had lived +all the time of my real life in torture, and, that the days when existence +had a pleasure, in it were a dream long, long gone by._" + +The reader may begin to suspect that I was fast going mad; and I believe I +was. If he has followed my story with a human heart, he may excuse me of +any extreme weakness, if I did at moments totter on the verge of that +abyss. + +What saved me, I believe now, was the keen, bright look of love and +confidence which flashed on me from Crossthwaite's glittering eyes, when he +was called forward as a witness to my character. He spoke out like a man, +I hear, that day. But the counsel for the crown tried to silence him +triumphantly, by calling on him to confess himself a Chartist; as if a man +must needs be a liar and a villain because he holds certain opinions about +the franchise! However that was, I heard, the general opinion of the court. +And then Crossthwaite lost his temper and called the Queen's counsel a +hired bully, and so went down; having done, as I was told afterwards, no +good to me. + +And then there followed a passage of tongue fence between Mackaye and some +barrister, and great laughter at the barrister's expense; and then. I heard +the old man's voice rise thin and clear: + +"Let him that is without sin amang ye, cast the first stane!" + +And as he went down he looked at me--a look full of despair. I never had +had a ray of hope from the beginning; but now I began to think whether men +suffered much when they were hung, and whether one woke at once into the +next life, or had to wait till the body had returned to the dust, and watch +the ugly process of one's own decay. I was not afraid of death--I never +experienced that sensation. I am not physically brave. I am as thoroughly +afraid of pain as any child can be; but that next world has never offered +any prospect to me, save boundless food for my insatiable curiosity. + + * * * * * + +But at that moment my attorney thrust into my hand a little dirty scrap of +paper. "Do you know this man?" I read it. + +"SIR,--I wull tell all truthe. Mr. Locke is a murdered man if he be hanged. +Lev me spek out, for love of the Lord. + +"J. DAVIS." + +No. I never had heard of him; and I let the paper fall. + +A murdered man? I had known that all along. Had not the Queen's counsel +been trying all day to murder me, as was their duty, seeing that they got +their living thereby? + +A few moments after, a labouring man was in the witness-box; and to my +astonishment, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the +truth. + +I will not trouble the reader with his details, for they were simply +and exactly what I have already stated. He was badgered, bullied, +cross-examined, but nothing could shake him. With that dogged honesty, and +laconic dignity, which is the good side of the English peasant's character, +he stood manfully to his assertion--that I had done everything that words +or actions could do to prevent violence, even to the danger of my own +personal safety. He swore to the words which I used when trying to wrest +the desk from the man who had stolen it; and when the Queen's counsel asked +him, tauntingly, who had set him on bringing his new story there at the +eleventh hour, he answered, equally to the astonishment of his questioner, +and of me, + +"Muster Locke, hisself." + +"What! the prisoner?" almost screamed the counsellor, who fancied, I +suppose, that he had stumbled on a confession of unblushing bribery. + +"Yes, he; he there. As he went up over hill to meeting he met my two boys +a shep-minding; and, because the cutter was froze, he stop and turn the +handle for 'em for a matter of ten minutes; and I was coming up over field, +and says I, I'll hear what that chap's got to say--there can't be no harm +in going up arter the likes of he; for, says I to myself, a man can't have +got any great wickedness a plotting in he's head, when he'll stop a ten +minutes to help two boys as he never sot eyes on afore in his life; and I +think their honours'll say the same." + +Whether my reader will agree or not with the worthy fellow, my counsel, I +need not say, did, and made full use of his hint. All the previous evidence +was now discovered to have corroborated the last witness, except where +it had been notoriously overthrown. I was extolled as a miracle of calm +benevolence; and black became grey, and grey became spotless white, and the +whole feeling of the court seemed changed in my favour; till the little +attorney popped up his head and whispered to me: + +"By George! that last witness has saved your life." + +To which I answered, "Very well"--and turned stupidly back upon that +nightmare thought--was Lillian in the court? + + * * * * * + +At last, a voice, the judge's I believe, for it was grave, gentle, almost +compassionate, asked us one by one whether we had anything to say in our +own defence. I recollect an indistinct murmur from one after another of the +poor semi-brutes on my left; and then my attorney looking up to me, made +me aware that I was expected to speak. On the moment, somehow, my whole +courage returned to me. I felt that I must unburden my heart, now or never. +With a sudden effort I roused myself, and looking fixedly and proudly at +the reverend face opposite, began: + +"The utmost offence which has been proved against me is a few bold words, +producing consequences as unexpected as illogical. If the stupid ferocity +with which my words were misunderstood, as by a horde of savages rather +than Englishmen;--if the moral and physical condition of these prisoners at +my side;--of those witnesses who have borne testimony against me, miserable +white slaves, miscalled free labourers;--ay, if a single walk through the +farms and cottages on which this mischief was bred, affords no excuse for +one indignant sentence--" + +There she was! There she had been all the time--right opposite to me, close +to the judge--cold, bright, curious--smiling! And as our eyes met, she +turned away, and whispered gaily something to a young man who sat beside +her. + +Every drop of blood in my body rushed into my forehead; the court, the +windows, and the faces, whirled round and round, and I fell senseless on +the floor of the dock. + + * * * * * + +I next recollect some room or other in the gaol, Mackaye with both my hands +in his; and the rough kindly voice of the gaoler congratulating me on +having "only got three years." + +"But you didn't show half a good pluck," said some one. "There's two on 'em +transported, took it as bold as brass, and thanked the judge for getting +'em out 'o this starving place 'free gracious for nothing," says they." + +"Ah!" quoth the little attorney, rubbing his hands, "you should have seen +* * * * and * * * * after the row in '42! They were the boys for the Bull +Ring! Gave a barrister as good as he brought, eh, Mr. Mackaye? My small +services, you remember, were of no use, really no use at all--quite ashamed +to send in my little account. Managed the case themselves, like two +patriotic parties as they were, with a degree of forensic acuteness, +inspired by the consciousness of a noble cause--Ahem! You remember, friend +M.? Grand triumphs those, eh?" + +"Ay," said Sandy, "I mind them unco weel--they cost me a' my few savings, +mair by token; an' mony a braw fallow paid for ither folks' sins that tide. +But my puir laddie here's no made o' that stuff. He's ower thin-skinned for +a patriot." + +"Ah, well--this little taste of British justice will thicken his hide for +him, eh?" And the attorney chuckled and winked. "He'll come out again as +tough as a bull dog, and as surly too. Eh, Mr. Mackaye?--eh?" + +"'Deed, then, I'm unco sair afeard that your opeenion is no a'thegither +that improbable," answered Sandy with a drawl of unusual solemnity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +PRISON THOUGHTS. + + +I was alone in my cell. + +Three years' imprisonment! Thirty-six months!--one thousand and ninety-five +days--and twenty-four whole hours in each of them! Well--I should sleep +half the time: one-third at least. Perhaps I should not be able to sleep! +To lie awake, and think--there! the thought was horrible--it was all +horrible. To have three whole years cut out of my life, instead of having +before me, as I had always as yet had, a mysterious Eldorado of new schemes +and hopes, possible developments, possible triumphs, possible bliss--to +have nothing, nothing before me but blank and stagnation, dead loss and +waste: and then to go out again, and start once more where I had left off +yesterday! + +It should not be! I would not lose these years! I would show myself a man; +they should feel my strength just when they fancied they had crushed me +utterly! They might bury me, but I should rise again!--I should rise again +more glorious, perhaps to be henceforth immortal, and live upon the lips +of men. I would educate myself; I would read--what would I not read? These +three years should be a time of sacred retirement and contemplation, as of +Thebaid Anchorite, or Mahomet in his Arabian cave. I would write pamphlets +that should thunder through the land, and make tyrants tremble on their +thrones! All England--at least all crushed and suffering hearts--should +break forth at my fiery words into one roar of indignant sympathy. No--I +would write a poem; I would concentrate all my experience, my aspirations, +all the hopes, and wrongs, and sorrows of the poor, into one garland of +thorns--one immortal epic of suffering. What should I call it? And I set to +work deliberately--such a thing is man--to think of a title. + +I looked up, and my eye caught the close bars of the little window; +and then came over me, for the first time, the full meaning of that +word--Prison; that word which the rich use so lightly, knowing well that +there is no chance, in these days, of there ever finding themselves in one; +for the higher classes never break the laws--seeing that they have made +them to fit themselves. Ay, I was in prison. I could not go out or come in +at will. I was watched, commanded at every turn. I was a brute animal, a +puppet, a doll, that children put away in a cupboard, and there it lies. +And yet my whole soul was as wide, fierce, roving, struggling as ever. +Horrible contradiction! The dreadful sense of helplessness, the crushing +weight of necessity, seemed to choke me. The smooth white walls, the +smooth white ceiling, seemed squeezing in closer and closer on me, and yet +dilating into vast inane infinities, just as the merest knot of mould +will transform itself, as one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous +cliffs, long slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those smooth +white walls and ceilings! If there had but been a print--a stain of dirt--a +cobweb, to fleck their unbroken ghastliness! They stared at me, like grim, +impassive, featureless formless fiends; all the more dreadful for their +sleek, hypocritic cleanliness--purity as of a saint-inquisitor watching +with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me--I gasped +for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor--the +narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed +to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up, as if to +follow it--rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin, +puny arms--and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral +towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery bars of +sunset, like great angels at the gates of Paradise, watching in stately +sorrow all the wailing and the wrong below. And beneath, beneath--the +well-known roofs--Lillian's home, and all its proud and happy memories! It +was but a corner of a gable, a scrap of garden, that I could see beyond +intervening roofs and trees--but could I mistake them? There was the very +cedar-tree; I knew its dark pyramid but too well! There I had walked by +her; there, just behind that envious group of chestnuts, she was now. The +light was fading; it must be six o'clock; she must be in her room now, +dressing herself for dinner, looking so beautiful! And as I gazed, and +gazed, all the intervening objects became transparent and vanished before +the intensity of my imagination. Were my poems in her room still? Perhaps +she had thrown them away--the condemned rioter's poems! Was she thinking of +me? Yes--with horror and contempt. Well, at least she was thinking of me. +And she would understand me at last--she must. Some day she would know +all I had borne for love of her--the depth, the might, the purity of my +adoration. She would see the world honouring me, in the day of my triumph, +when I was appreciated at last; when I stood before the eyes of admiring +men, a people's singer, a king of human spirits, great with the rank which +genius gives, then she would find out what a man had loved her: then she +would know the honour, the privilege of a poet's worship. + +--But that trial scene. + +Ay--that trial scene. That cold unmoved smile!--when she knew me, must have +known me, not to be the wretch which those hired slanderers had called me. +If she had cared for me--if she had a woman's heart in her at all, any +pity, any justice, would she not have spoken? Would she not have called on +others to speak, and clear me of the calumny? Nonsense! Impossible! She--so +frail, tender, retiring--how could she speak? How did I know that she had +not felt for me? It was woman's nature--duty, to conceal her feelings; +perhaps that after all was the true explanation of that smile. Perhaps, +too, she might have spoken--might be even now pleading for me in secret; +not that I wished to be pardoned--not I--but it would be so delicious to +have her, her, pleading for me! Perhaps--perhaps I might hear of her--from +her! Surely she could not leave me here so close, without some token! And I +actually listened, I know not how long, expecting the door to open, and a +message to arrive; till, with my eyes riveted on that bit of gable, and my +ears listening behind me like a hare's in her form, to catch every sound in +the ward outside, I fell fast asleep, and forgot all in the heavy dreamless +torpor of utter mental and bodily exhaustion. + +I was awakened by the opening of my cell door and the appearance of the +turnkey. + +"Well, young man, all right again? You've had a long nap; and no wonder, +you've had a hard time of it lately; and a good lesson, to you, too." + +"How long have I slept? I do not recollect going to bed. And how came I to +lie down without undressing?" + +"I found you, at lock-up hours, asleep there kneeling on the chair, with +your head on the window-sill; and a mercy you hadn't tumbled off and broke +your back. Now, look here.--You seems a civil sort of chap; and civil gets +as civil gives with me. Only don't you talk no politics. They ain't no good +to nobody, except the big 'uns, wot gets their living thereby; and I should +think you'd had dose enough on 'em to last for a month of Sundays. So just +get yourself tidy, there's a lad, and come along with me to chapel." + +I obeyed him, in that and other things; and I never received from him, or, +indeed, from any one else there, aught but kindness. I have no complaint to +make--but prison is prison. As for talking politics, I never, during those +three years, exchanged as many sentences with any of my fellow-prisoners. +What had I to say to them? Poachers and petty thieves--the scum of misery, +ignorance, and rascality throughout the country. If my heart yearned toward +them at times, it was generally shut close by the exclusive pride of +superior intellect and knowledge. I considered it, as it was, a degradation +to be classed with such; never asking myself how far I had brought that +degradation on myself; and I loved to show my sense of injustice by +walking, moody and silent, up and down a lonely corner of the yard; and at +last contrived, under the plea of ill health (and, truly, I never was ten +minutes without coughing), to confine myself entirely to my cell, and +escape altogether the company of a class whom I despised, almost hated, as +my betrayers, before whom I had cast away my pearls--questionable though +they were according to Mackaye. Oh! there is in the intellectual +workman's heart, as in all others, the root of Pharisaism--the lust after +self-glorifying superiority, on the ground of "genius." We too are men; +frail, selfish, proud as others. The days are past, thank God, when the +"gentlemen button-makers," used to insist on a separate tap-room from the +mere "button-makers," on the ground of earning a few more shillings per +week. But we are not yet thorough democrats, my brothers; we do not yet +utterly believe our own loud doctrine of equality; nor shall we till--But I +must not anticipate the stages of my own experience. + + * * * * * + +I complain of no one, again I say--neither of judge, jury, gaolers, or +chaplain. True, imprisonment was the worst possible remedy for my disease +that could have been devised, if, as the new doctrine is, punishments are +inflicted only to reform the criminal. What could prison do for me, but +embitter and confirm all my prejudices? But I do not see what else they +could have done with me while law is what it is, and perhaps ever will be; +dealing with the overt acts of the poor, and never touching the subtler +and more spiritual iniquities of the rich respectable. When shall we see a +nation ruled, not by the law, by the Gospel; not in the letter which kills, +but in the spirit which is love, forgiveness, life? When? God knows! And +God does know. + + * * * * * + +But I did work, during those three years, for months at a time, steadily +and severely; and with little profit, alas! to my temper of mind. I gorged +my intellect, for I could do nothing else. The political questions which +I longed to solve in some way or other, were tabooed by the well-meaning +chaplain. He even forbid me a standard English work on political economy, +which I had written to Mackaye to borrow for me; he was not so careful, it +will be seen hereafter, with foreign books. He meant, of course, to keep my +mind from what he considered at once useless and polluting; but the only +effect of his method was, that all the doubts and questions remained, +rankling and fierce, imperiously demanding my attention, and had to be +solved by my own moody and soured meditations, warped and coloured by the +strong sense of universal wrong. + +Then he deluged me with tracts, weak and well-meaning, which informed +me that "Christians," being "not of this world," had nothing to do with +politics; and preached to me the divine right of kings, passive obedience +to the powers--or impotences--that be, &c., &c., with such success as may +be imagined. I opened them each, read a few sentences, and laid them by. +"They were written by good men, no doubt; but men who had an interest in +keeping up the present system;" at all events by men who knew nothing of +my temptations, my creed, my unbelief; who saw all heaven and earth from a +station antipodal to my own; I had simply nothing to do with them. + +And yet, excellent man! pious, benignant, compassionate! God forbid that I +should, in writing these words, allow myself a desire so base as that of +disparaging thee! However thy words failed of their purpose, that bright, +gentle, earnest face never appeared without bringing balm to the wounded +spirit. Hadst thou not recalled me to humanity, those three years would +have made a savage and madman of me. May God reward thee hereafter! Thou +hast thy reward on earth in the gratitude of many a broken heart bound up, +of drunkards sobered, thieves reclaimed, and outcasts taught to look for a +paternal home denied them here on earth! While such thy deeds, what matter +thine opinions? + +But alas! (for the truth must be told, as a warning to those who have to +face the educated working men,) his opinions did matter to himself. The +good man laboured under the delusion, common enough, of choosing his +favourite weapons from his weakest faculty; and the very inferiority of his +intellect prevented him from seeing where his true strength lay. He _would_ +argue; he would try and convert me from scepticism by what seemed to him +reasoning, the common figure of which was, what logicians, I believe, call +begging the question; and the common method, what they call _ignoratio +elenchi_--shooting at pigeons, while crows are the game desired. He always +started by demanding my assent to the very question which lay at the bottom +of my doubts. He would wrangle and wrestle blindly up and down, with tears +of earnestness in his eyes, till he had lost his temper, as far as it was +possible for one so angel-guarded as he seemed to be; and then, when he +found himself confused, contradicting his own words, making concessions at +which he shuddered, for the sake of gaining from me assents which he found +out the next moment I understood in quite a different sense from his, he +would suddenly shift his ground, and try to knock me down authoritatively +with a single text of Scripture; when all the while I wanted proof that +Scripture had any authority at all. + +He carefully confined himself, too, throughout, to the dogmatic phraseology +of the pulpit; while I either did not understand, or required justification +for, the strange, far-fetched, technical meanings, which he attached to his +expressions. If he would only have talked English!--if clergymen would only +preach in English!--and then they wonder that their sermons have no effect! +Their notion seems to be, as my good chaplain's was, that the teacher is +not to condescend to the scholar, much less to become all things to all +men, if by any means he may save some; but that he has a right to demand +that the scholar shall ascend to him before he is taught; that he shall +raise himself up of his own strength into the teacher's region of thought +as well as feeling; to do for himself, in short, under penalty of being +called an unbeliever, just what the preacher professes to do for him. + +At last, he seemed dimly to discover that I could not acquiesce in his +conclusions, while I denied his premises; and so he lent me, in an +ill-starred moment, "Paley's Evidences," and some tracts of the last +generation against Deism. I read them, and remained, as hundreds more have +done, just where I was before. + +"Was Paley," I asked, "a really good and pious man?" + +The really good and pious man hemmed and hawed. + +"Because, if he was not, I can't trust a page of his special pleading, let +it look as clever as the whole Old Bailey in one." + +Besides, I never denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, or his +apostles. I doubted the myths and doctrines, which I believed to have been +gradually built up round the true story. The fact was, he was, like most of +his class, "attacking extinct Satans," fighting manfully against Voltaire, +Volney, and Tom Paine; while I was fighting for Strauss, Hennell, and +Emerson. And, at last, he gave me up for some weeks as a hopeless infidel, +without ever having touched the points on which I disbelieved. He had never +read Strauss--hardly even heard of him; and, till clergymen make up their +minds to do that, and to answer Strauss also, they will, as he did, leave +the heretic artisan just where they found him. + +The bad effect which all this had on my mind may easily be conceived. I +felt myself his intellectual superior. I tripped him up, played with him, +made him expose his weaknesses, till I really began to despise him. May +Heaven forgive me for it! But it was not till long afterwards that I began, +on looking back, to see how worthless was any superior cleverness of mine +before his superior moral and spiritual excellence. That was just what +he would not let me see at the time. I was worshipping intellect, mere +intellect; and thence arose my doubts; and he tried to conquer them by +exciting the very faculty which had begotten them. When will the clergy +learn that their strength is in action, and not in argument? If they are +to reconvert the masses, it must be by noble deeds, as Carlyle says; "not +by noisy theoretic laudation of _a_ Church, but by silent practical +demonstration of _the_ Church." + + * * * * * + +But, the reader may ask, where was your Bible all this time? + +Yes--there was a Bible in my cell--and the chaplain read to me, both +privately and in chapel, such portions of it as he thought suited my case, +or rather his utterly-mistaken view thereof. But, to tell the truth, I +cared not to read or listen. Was it not the book of the aristocrats--of +kings and priests, passive obedience, and the slavery of the intellect? +Had I been thrown under the influence of the more educated Independents +in former years, I might have thought differently. They, at least, have +contrived, with what logical consistence I know not, to reconcile orthodox +Christianity with unflinching democratic opinions. But such was not my lot. +My mother, as I said in my first chapter, had become a Baptist; because +she believed that sect, and as I think rightly, to be the only one which +logically and consistently carries out the Calvinistic theory; and now I +looked back upon her delight in Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jehu, only as +the mystic application of rare exceptions to the fanaticism of a chosen +few--the elect--the saints, who, as the fifth-monarchy men held, were +one day to rule the world with a rod of iron. And so I fell--willingly, +alas!--into the vulgar belief about the politics of Scripture, common +alike--strange unanimity!--to Infidel and Churchman. The great idea that +the Bible is the history of mankind's deliverance from all tyranny, outward +as well as inward; of the Jews, as the one free constitutional people among +a world of slaves and tyrants; of their ruin, as the righteous fruit of a +voluntary return to despotism; of the New Testament, as the good news that +freedom, brotherhood, and equality, once confided only to Judaea and to +Greece, and dimly seen even there, was henceforth to be the right of all +mankind, the law of all society--who was there to tell me that? Who is +there now to go forth and tell it to the millions who have suffered, and +doubted, and despaired like me, and turn the hearts of the disobedient to +the wisdom of the just, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come? +Again I ask--who will go forth and preach that Gospel, and save his native +land? + +But, as I said before, I read, and steadily. In the first place, I, for the +first time in my life, studied Shakspeare throughout; and found out now the +treasure which I had overlooked. I assure my readers I am not going to give +a lecture on him here, as I was minded to have done. Only, as I am asking +questions, who will write us a "People's Commentary on Shakspeare"? + +Then I waded, making copious notes and extracts, through the whole of Hume, +and Hallam's "Middle Ages," and "Constitutional History," and found them +barren to my soul. When (to ask a third and last question) will some +man, of the spirit of Carlyle--one who is not ashamed to acknowledge the +intervention of a God, a Providence, even of a devil, in the affairs of +men--arise, and write a "People's History of England"? + +Then I laboured long months at learning French, for the mere purpose of +reading French political economy after my liberation. But at last, in my +impatience, I wrote to Sandy to send me Proudhon and Louis Blanc, on the +chance of their passing the good chaplain's censorship--and behold, they +passed! He had never heard their names! He was, I suspect, utterly ignorant +of French, and afraid of exposing his ignorance by venturing to criticise. +As it was, I was allowed peaceable possession of them till within a few +months of my liberation, with such consequences as may be imagined: +and then, to his unfeigned terror and horror, he discovered, in some +periodical, that he had been leaving in my hands books which advocated "the +destruction of property," and therefore, in his eyes, of all which is moral +or sacred in earth or heaven! I gave them up without a struggle, so really +painful was the good soul's concern and the reproaches which he heaped, not +on me--he never reproached me in his life--but on himself, for having so +neglected his duty. + +Then I read hard for a few months at physical science--at Zoology and +Botany, and threw it aside again in bitterness of heart. It was too bitter +to be tantalized with the description of Nature's wondrous forms, and I +there a prisoner between those four white walls. + +Then I set to work to write an autobiography--at least to commit to paper +in regular order the most striking incidents and conversations which I +could recollect, and which I had noted down as they occurred in my diary. +From that source I have drawn nearly the whole of my history up to this +point. For the rest I must trust to memory--and, indeed, the strange deeds +and sufferings, and yet stranger revelations, of the last few months, have +branded themselves deep enough upon my brain. I need not hope, or fear, +that aught of them should slip my memory. + + * * * * * + +So went the weary time. Week after week, month after month, summer after +summer, I scored the days off, like a lonely school boy, on the pages of a +calendar; and day by day I went to my window, and knelt there, gazing at +the gable and the cedar-tree. That was my only recreation. Sometimes, at +first, my eyes used to wander over the wide prospect of rich lowlands, and +farms, and hamlets, and I used to amuse myself with conjectures about the +people who lived in them, and walked where they liked on God's earth: but +soon I hated to look at the country; its perpetual change and progress +mocked the dreary sameness of my dungeon. It was bitter, maddening, to see +the grey boughs grow green with leaves, and the green fade to autumnal +yellow, and the grey boughs reappear again, and I still there! The dark +sleeping fallows bloomed with emerald blades of corn, and then the corn +grew deep and crisp, and blackened before the summer breeze, in "waves of +shadow," as Mr. Tennyson says in one of his most exquisite lyrics; and then +the fields grew white to harvest day by day, and I saw the rows of sheaves +rise one by one, and the carts crawling homeward under their load. I could +almost hear the merry voices of the children round them--children that +could go into the woods, and pick wild flowers, and I still there! No--I +would look at nothing but the gable and the cedar-tree, and the tall +cathedral towers; there was no change in them--they did not laugh at me. + +But she who lived beneath them? Months and seasons crawled along, and yet +no sign or hint of her! I was forgotten, forsaken! And yet I gazed, and +gazed. I could not forget her; I could not forget what she had been to me. +Eden was still there, though I was shut out from it for ever: and so, like +a widower over the grave of her he loves, morning and evening I watched the +gable and the cedar-tree. + +And my cousin? Ah, that was the thought, the only thought, which made +my life intolerable! What might he not be doing in the meantime? I knew +his purpose, I knew his power. True, I had never seen a hint, a glance, +which could have given him hope; but he had three whole years to win her +in--three whole years, and I fettered, helpless, absent! "Fool! could I +have won her if I had been free? At least, I would have tried: we would +have fought it fairly out, on even ground; we would have seen which was the +strongest, respectability and cunning, or the simplicity of genius. But +now!"--And I tore at the bars of the window, and threw myself on the floor +of my cell, and longed to die. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +THE NEW CHURCH. + + +In a poor suburb of the city, which I could see well enough from my little +window, a new Gothic church was building. When I first took up my abode +in the cell, it was just begun--the walls had hardly risen above the +neighbouring sheds and garden-fences. But month after month I had watched +it growing; I had seen one window after another filled with tracery, one +buttress after another finished off with its carved pinnacle; then I had +watched the skeleton of the roof gradually clothed in tiling; and then the +glazing of the windows--some of them painted, I could see, from the iron +network which was placed outside them the same day. Then the doors were put +up--were they going to finish that handsome tower? No: it was left with its +wooden cap, I suppose for further funds. But the nave, and the deep chancel +behind it, were all finished, and surmounted by a cross,--and beautifully +enough the little sanctuary looked, in the virgin-purity of its spotless +freestone. For eighteen months I watched it grow before my eyes--and I was +still in my cell! + +And then there was a grand procession of surplices and lawn sleeves; and +among them I fancied I distinguished the old dean's stately figure, and +turned my head away, and looked again, and fancied I distinguished another +figure--it must have been mere imagination--the distance was far too +great for me to identify any one; but I could not get out of my head the +fancy--say rather, the instinct--that it was my cousin's; and that it was +my cousin whom I saw daily after that, coming out and going in--when the +bell rang to morning and evening prayers--for there were daily services +there, and saint's day services, and Lent services, and three services on a +Sunday, and six or seven on Good Friday and Easter-day. The little musical +bell above the chancel-arch seemed always ringing: and still that figure +haunted me like a nightmare, ever coming in and going out about its +priestly calling--and I still in my cell! If it should be he!--so close to +her! I shuddered at the thought; and, just because it was so intolerable, +it clung to me, and tormented me, and kept me awake at nights, till I +became utterly unable to study quietly, and spent hours at the narrow +window, watching for the very figure I loathed to see. + +And then a Gothic school-house rose at the churchyard end, and troops of +children poured in and out, and women came daily for alms; and when the +frosts came on, every morning I saw a crowd, and soup carried away in +pitchers, and clothes and blankets given away; the giving seemed endless, +boundless; and I thought of the times of the Roman Empire and the +"sportula," when the poor had got to live upon the alms of the rich, more +and more, year by year--till they devoured their own devourers, and the end +came; and I shuddered. And yet it was a pleasant sight, as every new church +is to the healthy-minded man, let his religious opinions be what they +may. A fresh centre of civilization, mercy, comfort for weary hearts, +relief from frost and hunger; a fresh centre of instruction, humanizing, +disciplining, however meagre in my eyes, to hundreds of little savage +spirits; altogether a pleasant sight, even to me there in my cell. And +I used to wonder at the wasted power of the Church--her almost entire +monopoly of the pulpits, the schools, the alms of England; and then thank +Heaven, somewhat prematurely, that she knew and used so little her vast +latent power for the destruction of liberty. + +Or for its realization? + +Ay, that is the question! We shall not see it solved--at least, I never +shall. + +But still that figure haunted me; all through that winter I saw it, +chatting with old women, patting children's heads, walking to the church +with ladies; sometimes with a tiny, tripping figure.--I did not dare to let +myself fancy who that might be. + + * * * * * + +December passed, and January came. I had now only two months more before my +deliverance. One day I seemed to myself to have passed a whole life in that +narrow room; and the next, the years and months seemed short and blank as a +night's sleep on waking; and there was no salient point in all my memory, +since that last sight of Lillian's smile, and the faces and the window +whirling round me as I fell. + +At last a letter came from Mackaye. "Ye speired for news o' your +cousin--an' I find he's a neebour o' yours; ca'd to a new kirk i' the city +o' your captivity--an' na stickit minister he makes, forbye he's ane o' +these new Puseyite sectarians, to judge by your uncle's report. I met +the auld bailie-bodie on the street, and was gaun to pass him by, but he +was sae fou o' good news he could na but stop an' ha' a crack wi' me on +politics; for we ha' helpit thegither in certain municipal clamjamfries o' +late. An' he told me your cousin wins honour fast, an' maun surely die a +bishop--puir bairn! An' besides that he's gaun to be married the spring. +I dinna mind the leddy's name; but there's tocher wi' lass o' his I'll +warrant. He's na laird o' Cockpen, for a penniless lass wi' a long +pedigree." + +As I sat meditating over this news--which made the torment of suspicion and +suspense more intolerable than ever--behold a postscript added some two +days after. + +"Oh! Oh! Sic news! gran news! news to make baith the ears o' him that +heareth it to tingle. God is God, an' no the deevil after a'! Louis +Philippe is doun!--doun, doun, like a dog, and the republic's proclaimed, +an' the auld villain here in England, they say, a wanderer an' a beggar. I +ha' sent ye the paper o' the day. Ps.--73, 37, 12. Oh, the Psalms are full +o't! Never say the Bible's no true, mair. I've been unco faithless mysel', +God forgive me! I got grieving to see the wicked in sic prosperity. I did +na gang into the sanctuary eneugh, an' therefore I could na see the end of +these men--how He does take them up suddenly after all, an' cast them doun: +vanish they do, perish, an' come to a fearful end. Yea, like as a dream +when one awaketh, so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city. +Oh, but it's a day o' God! An' yet I'm sair afraid for they puir feckless +French. I ha' na faith, ye ken, in the Celtic blude, an' its spirit o' +lees. The Saxon spirit o' covetize is a grewsome house-fiend, and sae's our +Norse speerit o' shifts an' dodges; but the spirit o' lees is warse. Puir +lustful Reubens that they are!--unstable as water, they shall not excel. +Well, well--after all, there is a God that judgeth the earth; an' when a +man kens that, he's learnt eneugh to last him till he dies." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +THE TOWER OF BABEL. + + + A glorious people vibrated again + The lightning of the nations; Liberty + From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er France, + Scattering contagious fire into the sky, + Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay; + And in the rapid plumes of song + Clothed itself sublime and strong. + +Sublime and strong? Alas! not so. An outcast, heartless, faithless, and +embittered, I went forth from my prison.--But yet Louis Philippe had +fallen! And as I whirled back to Babylon and want, discontent and discord, +my heart was light, my breath came thick and fierce.--The incubus of France +had fallen! and from land to land, like the Beacon-fire which leaped from +peak to peak proclaiming Troy's downfall, passed on the glare of burning +idols, the crash of falling anarchies. Was I mad, sinful? Both--and yet +neither. Was I mad and sinful, if on my return to my old haunts, amid the +grasp of loving hands and the caresses of those who called me in their +honest flattery a martyr and a hero--what things, as Carlyle says, men will +fall down and worship in their extreme need!--was I mad and sinful, if +daring hopes arose, and desperate words were spoken, and wild eyes read in +wild eyes the thoughts they dare not utter? "Liberty has risen from the +dead, and we too will be free!" + +Yes, mad and sinful; therefore are we as we are. Yet God has forgiven +us--perhaps so have those men whose forgiveness is alone worth having. + +Liberty? And is that word a dream, a lie, the watchword only of rebellious +fiends, as bigots say even now? Our forefathers spoke not so-- + + The shadow of her coming fell + On Saxon Alfred's olive-tinctured brow. + +Had not freedom, progressive, expanding, descending, been the glory and the +strength of England? Were Magna Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act, Hampden's +resistance to ship-money, and the calm, righteous might of 1688--were they +all futilities and fallacies? Ever downwards, for seven hundred years, +welling from the heaven-watered mountain peaks of wisdom, had spread the +stream of liberty. The nobles had gained their charter from John; the +middle classes from William of Orange: was not the time at hand, when from +a queen, more gentle, charitable, upright, spotless, than had ever sat on +the throne of England, the working masses in their turn should gain their +Charter? + +If it was given, the gift was hers: if it was demanded to the uttermost, +the demand would be made, not on her, but on those into whose hands her +power had passed, the avowed representatives neither of the Crown nor of +the people, but of the very commercial class which was devouring us. + +Such was our dream. Insane and wicked were the passions which accompanied +it; insane and wicked were the means we chose; and God in his mercy to us, +rather than to Mammon, triumphant in his iniquity, fattening his heart +even now for a spiritual day of slaughter more fearful than any physical +slaughter which we in our folly had prepared for him--God frustrated them. + +We confess our sins. Shall the Chartist alone be excluded from the promise, +"If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, +and cleanse us from all unrighteousness"? + +And yet, were there no excuses for us? I do not say for myself--and yet +three years of prison might be some excuse for a soured and harshened +spirit--but I will not avail myself of the excuse; for there were men, +stancher Chartists than ever I had been--men who had suffered not only +imprisonment, but loss of health and loss of fortune; men whose influence +with the workmen was far wider than my own, and whose temptations were +therefore all the greater, who manfully and righteously kept themselves +aloof from all those frantic schemes, and now reap their reward, in being +acknowledged as the true leaders of the artizans, while the mere preachers +of sedition are scattered to the winds. + +But were there no excuses for the mass? Was there no excuse in the spirit +with which the English upper classes regarded the continental revolutions? +No excuse in the undisguised dislike, fear, contempt, which they expressed +for that very sacred name of Liberty, which had been for ages the pride of +England and her laws-- + + The old laws of England, they + Whose reverend heads with age are grey-- + Children of a wiser day-- + And whose solemn voice must be + Thine own echo, Liberty! + +for which, according to the latest improvements, is now substituted a +bureaucracy of despotic commissions? Shame upon those who sneered at the +very name of her to whom they owed the wealth they idolize! who cry down +liberty because God has given it to them in such priceless abundance, +boundless as the sunshine and the air of heaven, that they are become +unconscious of it as of the elements by which they live! Woe to those who +despise the gift of God! Woe to those who have turned His grace into a +cloak for tyranny; who, like the Jews of old, have trampled under foot His +covenant at the very moment that they were asserting their exclusive right +to it, and denying his all-embracing love! + +And were there no excuses, too, in the very arguments which +nineteen-twentieths of the public press used to deter us from following the +example of the Continent? If there had been one word of sympathy with the +deep wrongs of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary--one attempt to discriminate +the righteous and God-inspired desire of freedom, from man's furious and +self-willed perversion of it, we would have listened to them. But, instead, +what was the first, last, cardinal, crowning argument?--"The cost of +sedition!" "Revolutions interfered with trade!" and therefore they were +damnable! Interfere with the food and labour of the millions? The millions +would take the responsibility of that upon themselves. If the party of +order cares so much for the millions, why had they left them what they +are? No: it was with the profits of the few that revolutions interfered; +with the Divine right, not so much of kings, but of money-making. They +hampered Mammon, the very fiend who is devouring the masses. The one end +and aim of existence was, the maintenance of order--of peace and room to +make money in. And therefore Louis' spies might make France one great +inquisition-hell; German princelets might sell their country piecemeal to +French or Russian! the Hungarian constitution, almost the counterpart of +our own, might be sacrificed at the will of an idiot or villain; Papal +misgovernment might continue to render Rome a worse den of thieves than +even Papal superstition could have made it without the addition of tyranny; +but Order must be maintained, for how else could the few make money out of +the labour of the many? These were their own arguments. Whether they were +likely to conciliate the workman to the powers that be, by informing him +that those powers were avowedly the priests of the very system which was +crushing him, let the reader judge. + +The maintenance of order--of the order of disorder--that was to be the new +God before whom the working classes were to bow in spell-bound awe; an idol +more despicable and empty than even that old divine right of tyrants, newly +applied by some well-meaning but illogical personages, not merely as of old +to hereditary sovereigns, but to Louis Philippes, usurers, upstarts--why +not hereafter to demagogues? Blindfold and desperate bigots! who would +actually thus, in the imbecility of terror, deify that very right of the +physically strongest and cunningest, which, if anything, is antichrist +itself. That argument against sedition, the workmen heard; and, +recollecting 1688, went on their way, such as it was, unheeding. + +One word more, even at the risk of offending many whom I should be very +sorry to offend, and I leave this hateful discussion. Let it ever be +remembered that the working classes considered themselves deceived, +cajoled, by the passers of the Reform Bill; that they cherished--whether +rightly or wrongly it is now too late to ask--a deep-rooted grudge +against those who had, as they thought, made their hopes and passions a +stepping-stone towards their own selfish ends. They were told to support +the Reform Bill, not only on account of its intrinsic righteousness--which +God forbid that I should deny--but because it was the first of a glorious +line of steps towards their enfranchisement; and now the very men who told +them this, talked peremptorily of "finality," showed themselves the most +dogged and careless of conservatives, and pooh-poohed away every attempt at +further enlargement of the suffrage. They were told to support it as the +remedy for their own social miseries; and behold those miseries were year +by year becoming deeper, more wide-spread, more hopeless; their entreaties +for help and mercy, in 1842, and at other times, had been lazily laid by +unanswered; and almost the only practical efforts for their deliverance had +been made by a Tory nobleman, the honoured and beloved Lord Ashley. They +found that they had, in helping to pass the Reform Bill, only helped to +give power to the two very classes who crushed them--the great labour +kings, and the small shopkeepers; that they had blindly armed their +oppressors with the additional weapon of an ever-increasing political +majority. They had been told, too (let that never be forgotten), that in +order to carry the Reform Bill, sedition itself was lawful; they had seen +the master-manufacturers themselves give the signal for the plug-riots by +stopping their mills. Their vanity, ferocity, sense of latent and fettered +power, pride of numbers, and physical strength, had been nattered and +pampered by those who now only talked of grape-shot and bayonets. They had +heard the Reform Bill carried by the threats of men of rank and power, +that "Manchester should march upon London." Were their masters, then, to +have a monopoly in sedition, as in everything else? What had been fair in +order to compel the Reform Bill, must surely be fairer still to compel +the fulfilment of Reform Bill pledges? And so, imitating the example of +those whom they fancied had first used and then deserted them, they, in +their madness, concocted a rebellion, not primarily against the laws and +constitution of their land, but against Mammon--against that accursed +system of competition, slavery of labour, absorption of the small +capitalists by the large ones, and of the workman by all, which is, and +was, and ever will be, their internecine foe. Silly and sanguinary enough +were their schemes, God knows! and bootless enough had they succeeded; +for nothing nourishes in the revolutionary atmosphere but that lowest +embodiment of Mammon, "the black pool of Agio," and its money-gamblers. But +the battle remains still to be fought; the struggle is internecine; only no +more with weapons of flesh and blood, but with a mightier weapon--with that +association which is the true bane of Mammon--the embodiment of brotherhood +and love. + +We should have known that before the tenth of April? Most true, reader--but +wrath is blindness. You too surely have read more wisdom than you have +practised yet; seeing that you have your Bible, and perhaps, too, Mill's +"Political Economy." Have you perused therein the priceless Chapter "On +the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes"? If not, let me give you +the reference--vol. ii, p. 315, of the Second Edition. Read it, thou +self-satisfied Mammon, and perpend; for it is both a prophecy and a doom! + + * * * * * + +But, the reader may ask, how did you, with your experience of the reason, +honesty, moderation, to be expected of mobs, join in a plan which, if it +had succeeded, must have let loose on those "who had" in London, the whole +flood of those "who had not"? + +The reader shall hear. My story may be instructive, as a type of the +feelings of thousands beside me. + +It was the night after I had returned from D * * * *; sitting in +Crossthwaite's little room, I had heard with mingled anxiety and delight +the plans of my friends. They were about to present a monster petition in +favour of the Charter; to accompany it _en masse_ to the door of the House +of Commons; and if it was refused admittance--why, then, ulterior measures +were the only hope. "And they will refuse it," said Crossthwaite; "they're +going, I hear, to revive some old law or other, that forbids processions +within such and such a distance of the House of Commons. Let them forbid! +To carry arms, to go in public procession, to present petitions openly, +instead of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table unopened +by some careless member--they're our rights, and we'll have them. There's +no use mincing the matter: it's just like the old fable of the farmer and +his wheat--if we want it reaped, we must reap it ourselves. Public opinion, +and the pressure from without, are the only things which have carried any +measure in England for the last twenty years. Neither Whigs nor Tories deny +it: the governed govern their governors--that's the 'ordre du jour' just +now--and we'll have our turn at it! We'll give those House of Commons +oligarchs--those tools of the squires and shopkeepers--we'll give them a +taste of pleasure from without, as shall make the bar of the house crack +again. And then to be under arms, day and night, till the Charter's +granted." + +"And if it is refused?" + +"Fight! that's the word, and no other. There's no other hope. No +Charter,--No social reforms! We must give them ourselves, for no one else +will. Look there, and judge for yourself!" + +He pulled a letter out from among his papers, and threw it across to me. + +"What's this?" + +"That came while you were in gaol. There don't want many words about it. +We sent up a memorial to government about the army and police clothing. We +told 'em how it was the lowest, most tyrannous, most ill-paid of all the +branches of slop-making; how men took to it only when they were starved +out of everything else. We entreated them to have mercy on us--entreated +them to interfere between the merciless contractors and the poor wretches +on whose flesh and blood contractors, sweaters, and colonels, were all +fattening: and there's the answer we got. Look at it; read it! Again and +again I've been minded to placard it on the walls, that all the world +might see the might and the mercies of the government. Read it! 'Sorry +to say that it is utterly out of the power of her Majesty's * * * *s to +interfere--as the question of wages rests entirely between the contractor +and the workmen.'" + +"He lies!" I said. "If it did, the workmen might put a pistol to the +contractor's head, and say--'You shall not tempt the poor, needy, greedy, +starving workers to their own destruction, and the destruction of their +class; you shall not offer these murderous, poisonous prices. If we saw +you offering our neighbour a glass of laudanum, we would stop you at all +risks--and we will stop you now.' No! no! John, the question don't +lie between workman and contractor, but between workman and +contractor-plus-grape-and-bayonets!" + +"Look again. There's worse comes after that. 'If government did interfere, +it would not benefit the workman, as his rate of wages depends entirely +on the amount of competition between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my +dear children, you must eat each other; we are far too fond parents to +interfere with so delightful an amusement! Curse them--sleek, hard-hearted, +impotent do-nothings! They confess themselves powerless against +competition--powerless against the very devil that is destroying us, faster +and faster every year! They can't help us on a single point. They can't +check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population +which exists. They daren't give us a comprehensive emigration scheme. They +daren't lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market. They daren't +interfere between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They are +cowards, and like cowards they shall fall!" + +"Ay--like cowards they shall fall!" I answered; and from that moment I was +a rebel and a conspirator. + +"And will the country join us?" + +"The cities will; never mind the country. They are too weak to resist their +own tyrants--and they are too weak to resist us. The country's always +drivelling in the background. A country-party's sure to be a party of +imbecile bigots. Nobody minds them." + +I laughed. "It always was so, John. When Christianity first spread, it was +in the cities--till a pagan, a villager, got to mean a heathen for ever and +ever." + +"And so it was in the French revolution; when Popery had died out of all +the rest of France, the priests and the aristocrats still found their dupes +in the remote provinces." + +"The sign of a dying system that, to be sure. Woe to Toryism and the +Church of England, and everything else, when it gets to boasting that its +stronghold is still the hearts of the agricultural poor. It is the cities, +John, the cities, where the light dawns first--where man meets man, and +spirit quickens spirit, and intercourse breeds knowledge, and knowledge +sympathy, and sympathy enthusiasm, combination, power irresistible; while +the agriculturists remain ignorant, selfish, weak, because they are +isolated from each other. Let the country go. The towns shall win the +Charter for England! And then for social reform, sanitary reform, aedile +reform, cheap food, interchange of free labour, liberty, equality, and +brotherhood for ever!" + +Such was our Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven. To understand +the allurement of that dream, you must have lain, like us, for years in +darkness and the pit. You must have struggled for bread, for lodging, for +cleanliness, for water, for education--all that makes life worth living +for--and found them becoming, year by year, more hopelessly impossible, if +not to yourself, yet still to the millions less gifted than yourself; you +must have sat in darkness and the shadow of death, till you are ready to +welcome any ray of light, even though it should be the glare of a volcano. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +A PATRIOT'S REWARD. + + +I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite and I strode +back together from the Convention. We had walked on some way arm in arm +in silence, under the crushing and embittering sense of having something +to conceal--something, which if those who passed us so carelessly in +the street had known--! It makes a villain and a savage of a man, that +consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it was a hateful one!--a +dark and desperate necessity, which we tried to call by noble names, that +faltered on our lips as we pronounced them; for the spirit of God was not +in us; and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lodestar of duty, +weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult, and flame, +and blood. + +"It must be done!--it shall be done!--it will be done!" burst out John, at +last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of +his own words. "I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the +way as clear as day." + +I felt nothing but the dogged determination of despair. "It must be tried, +if the worst comes to the worst--but I have no hope. I read Somerville's +answer to that Colonel Macerone. Ten years ago he showed it was impossible. +We cannot stand against artillery; we have no arms." + +"I'll tell you where to buy plenty. There's a man, Power, or Bower, he's +sold hundreds in the last few days; and he understands the matter. He tells +us we're certain, safe. There are hundreds of young men in the government +offices ready to join, if we do but succeed at first. It all depends on +that. The first hour settles the fate of a revolution." + +"If we succeed, yes--the cowardly world will always side with the +conquering party; and we shall have every pickpocket and ruffian in our +wake, plundering in the name of liberty and order." + +"Then we'll shoot them like dogs, as the French did! 'Mort aux voleurs' +shall be the word!" + +"Unless they shoot us. The French had a national guard, who had property +to lose, and took care of it. The shopkeepers here will be all against us; +they'll all be sworn in special constables, to a man; and between them and +the soldiers, we shall have three to one upon us." + +"Oh! that Power assures me the soldiers will fraternize. He says there are +three regiments at least have promised solemnly to shoot their officers, +and give up their arms to the mob." + +"Very important, if true--and very scoundrelly, too, I'd sooner be shot +myself by fair fighting, than see officers shot by cowardly treason." + +"Well, it's ugly. I like fair play as well as any man. But it can't be +done. There must be a surprise, a _coup de main_, as the French say" (poor +Crossthwaite was always quoting French in those days). "Once show our +strength--burst upon the tyrants like a thunderclap; and then!-- + + "Men of England, heirs of glory, + Heroes of unwritten story, + Rise, shake off the chains like dew + Which in sleep have fallen on you! + Ye are many, they are few!" + +"That's just what I am afraid they are not. Let's go and find out this man +Power, and hear his authority for the soldier-story. Who knows him?" + +"Why, Mike Kelly and he had been a deal together of late, Kelly's a true +heart now--a true Irishman ready for anything. Those Irish are the boys, +after all--though I don't deny they do bluster and have their way a little +too much in the Convention. But still Ireland's wrongs are England's. We +have the same oppressors. We must make common cause against the tyrants." + +"I wish to Heaven they would just have stayed at home, and ranted on the +other side of the water; they had their own way there, and no Mammonite +middle-class to keep them down; and yet they never did an atom of good. +Their eloquence is all bombast, and what's more, Crossthwaite, though there +are some fine fellows among them, nine-tenths are liars--liars in grain, +and you know it--" + +Crossthwaite turned angrily to me. "Why, you are getting as reactionary as +old Mackaye himself!" + +"I am not--and he is not. I am ready to die on a barricade to-morrow, if +it comes to that. I haven't six months' lease of life--I am going into +consumption; and a bullet is as easy a death as spitting up my lungs +piecemeal. But I despise these Irish, because I can't trust them--they +can't trust each other--they can't trust themselves. You know as well as I +that you can't get common justice done in Ireland, because you can depend +upon no man's oath. You know as well as I, that in Parliament or out, nine +out of ten of them will stick at no lie, even if it has been exposed and +refuted fifty times over, provided it serves the purpose of the moment; and +I often think that, after all, Mackaye's right, and what's the matter with +Ireland is just that and nothing else--that from the nobleman in his +castle to the beggar on his dunghill, they are a nation of liars, John +Crossthwaite!" + +"Sandy's a prejudiced old Scotchman." + +"Sandy's a wiser man than you or I, and you know it." + +"Oh, I don't deny that; but he's getting old, and I think he has been +failing in his mind of late." + +"I'm afraid he's failing in his health; he has never been the same man +since they hooted him down in John Street. But he hasn't altered in his +opinions one jot; and I'll tell you what--I believe he's right. I'll die in +this matter like a man, because it's the cause of liberty; but I've fearful +misgivings about it, just because Irishmen are at the head of it." + +"Of course they are--they have the deepest wrongs; and that makes them +most earnest in the cause of right. The sympathy of suffering, as they say +themselves, has bound them to the English working man against the same +oppressors." + +"Then let them fight those oppressors at home, and we'll do the same: +that's the true way to show sympathy. Charity begins at home. They are +always crying 'Ireland for the Irish'; why can't they leave England for the +English?" + +"You're envious of O'Connor's power!" + +"Say that again, John Crossthwaite, and we part for ever!" And I threw off +his arm indignantly. + +"No--but--don't let's quarrel, my dear old fellow--now, that perhaps, +perhaps we may never meet again--but I can't bear to hear the Irish abused. +They're noble, enthusiastic, generous fellows. If we English had half as +warm hearts, we shouldn't be as we are now; and O'Connor's a glorious +man, I tell you. Just think of him, the descendant of the ancient kings, +throwing away his rank, his name, all he had in the world, for the cause of +the suffering millions!" + +"That's a most aristocratic speech, John," said I, smiling, in spite of my +gloom. "So you keep a leader because he's descended from ancient kings, do +you? I should prefer him just because he was not--just because he was a +working man, and come of workmen's blood. We shall see whether he's stanch +after all. To my mind, little Cuffy's worth a great deal more, as far as +earnestness goes." + +"Oh! Cuffy's a low-bred, uneducated fellow." + +"Aristocrat again, John!" said I, as we went up-stairs to Kelly's room. And +Crossthwaite did not answer. + +There was so great a hubbub inside Kelly's room, of English, French, and +Irish, all talking at once, that we knocked at intervals for full five +minutes, unheard by the noisy crew; and I, in despair, was trying the +handle, which was fast, when, to my astonishment, a heavy blow was struck +on the panel from the inside, and the point of a sharp instrument driven +right through, close to my knees, with the exclamation-- + +"What do you think o' that, now, in a policeman's bread-basket?" + +"I think," answered I, as loud as I dare, and as near the dangerous door, +"if I intended really to use it, I wouldn't make such a fool's noise about +it." + +There was a dead silence; the door was hastily opened, and Kelly's nose +poked out; while we, in spite of the horribleness of the whole thing, could +not help laughing at his face of terror. Seeing who we were he welcomed +us in at once, into a miserable apartment, full of pikes and daggers, +brandished by some dozen miserable, ragged, half-starved artizans. +Three-fourths, I saw at once, were slop-working tailors. There was a +bloused and bearded Frenchman or two; but the majority were, as was to have +been expected, the oppressed, the starved, the untaught, the despairing, +the insane; "the dangerous classes," which society creates, and then +shrinks in horror, like Frankenstein, from the monster her own clumsy +ambition has created. Thou Frankenstein Mammon! hast thou not had warnings +enough, either to make thy machines like men, or stop thy bungling, and let +God make them for Himself? + +I will not repeat what I heard there. There is many a frantic ruffian +of that night now sitting "in his right mind"--though not yet +"clothed"--waiting for God's deliverance, rather than his own. + +We got Kelly out of the room into the street, and began inquiring of +him the whereabouts of this said Bower or Power. "He didn't know,"--the +feather-headed Irishman that he was!--"Faix, by-the-by, he'd forgotten--an' +he went to look for him at the place he tould him, and they didn't know +sich a one there--" + +"Oh, oh! Mr. Power has an _alibi_, then? Perhaps an _alias_ too?" + +"He didn't know his name rightly. Some said it was Brown; but he was a +broth of a boy--a thrue people's man. Bedad, he gov' away arms afthen and +afthen to them that couldn't buy 'em. An' he's as free-spoken--och, but +he's put me into the confidence! Come down the street a bit, and I'll tell +yees--I'll be Lord-Lieutenant o' Dublin Castle meself, if it succades, as +shure as there's no snakes in ould Ireland, an' revenge her wrongs ankle +deep in the bhlood o' the Saxon! Whirroo! for the marthyred memory o' the +three hundred thousint vargens o' Wexford!" + +"Hold your tongue, you ass!" said Crossthwaite, as he clapped his hand over +his mouth, expecting every moment to find us all three in the Rhadamanthine +grasp of a policeman; while I stood laughing, as people will, for mere +disgust at the ridiculous, which almost always intermingles with the +horrible. + +At last, out it came-- + +"Bedad! we're going to do it! London's to be set o' fire in seventeen +places at the same moment, an' I'm to light two of them to me own self, and +make a holycrust--ay, that's the word--o' Ireland's scorpions, to sting +themselves to death in circling flame--" + +"You would not do such a villanous thing?" cried we, both at once. + +"Bedad! but I won't harm a hair o' their heads! Shure, we'll save the women +and childer alive, and run for the fire-ingins our blessed selves, and then +out with the pikes, and seize the Bank and the Tower-- + + "An' av' I lives, I lives victhorious, + An' av' I dies, my soul in glory is; + Love fa--a--are--well!" + +I was getting desperate: the whole thing seemed at once so horrible and so +impossible. There must be some villanous trap at the bottom of it. + +"If you don't tell me more about this fellow Power, Mike," said I, "I'll +blow your brains out on the spot: either you or he are villains." And I +valiantly pulled out my only weapon, the door key, and put it to his head. + +"Och! are you mad, thin? He's a broth of a boy; and I'll tell ye. Shure he +knows all about the red-coats, case he's an arthillery man himself, and +that's the way he's found out his gran' combustible." + +"An artilleryman?" said John. "He told me he was a writer for the press." + +"Bedad, thin, he's mistaken himself intirely; for he tould me with his own +mouth. And I'll show you the thing he sowld me as is to do it. Shure, it'll +set fire to the stones o' the street, av' you pour a bit vitriol on it." + +"Set fire to the stones? I must see that before I believe it." + +"Shure an' ye shall then. Where'll I buy a bit? Sorra a shop is there open +this time o' night; an' troth I forgot the name o' it intirely! Poker o' +Moses, but here's a bit in my pocket!" + +And out of his tattered coat-tail he lugged a flask of powder and a lump +of some cheap chemical salt, whose name I have, I am ashamed to say, +forgotten. + +"You're a pretty fellow to keep such things in the same pocket with +gunpowder!" + +"Come along to Mackaye's," said Crossthwaite. "I'll see to the bottom +of this. Be hanged, but I think the fellow's a cursed _mouchard_--some +government spy!" + +"Spy is he, thin? Och, the thief o' the world! I'll stab him! I'll murther +him! an' burn the town afterwards, all the same." + +"Unless," said I, "just as you've got your precious combustible to blaze +off, up he comes from behind the corner and gives you in charge to a +policeman. It's a villanous trap, you miserable fool, as sure as the moon's +in heaven." + +"Upon my word, I am afraid it is--and I'm trapped too." + +"Blood and turf! thin, it's he that I'll trap, thin. There's two million +free and inlightened Irishmen in London, to avenge my marthyrdom wi' pikes +and baggonets like raving salviges, and blood for blood!" + +"Like savages, indeed!" said I to Crossthwaite, "And pretty savage company +we are keeping. Liberty, like poverty, makes a man acquainted with strange +companions!" + +"And who's made 'em savages? Who has left them savages? That the greatest +nation of the earth has had Ireland in her hands three hundred years--and +her people still to be savages!--if that don't justify a revolution, what +does? Why, it's just because these poor brutes are what they are, that +rebellion becomes a sacred duty. It's for them--for such fools, brutes, as +that there, and the millions more like him, and likely to remain like him, +and I've made up my mind to do or die to-morrow!" + +There was a grand half-truth, distorted, miscoloured in the words, that +silenced me for the time. + +We entered Mackaye's door; strangely enough at that time of night, it stood +wide open. What could be the matter? I heard loud voices in the inner room, +and ran forward calling his name, when, to my astonishment, out past me +rushed a tall man, followed by a steaming kettle, which, missing him, took +full effect on Kelly's chest as he stood in the entry, filling his shoes +with boiling water, and producing a roar that might have been heard at +Temple Bar. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Have I hit him?" said the old man, in a state of unusual excitement. + +"Bedad! it was the man Power! the cursed spy! An' just as I was going to +slate the villain nately, came the kittle, and kilt me all over!" + +"Power? He's as many names as a pickpocket, and as many callings, too, I'll +warrant. He came sneaking in to tell me the sogers were a' ready to gie up +their arms if I'd come forward to them to-morrow. So I tauld him, sin' he +was so sure o't, he'd better gang and tak the arms himsel; an' then he let +out he'd been a policeman--" + +"A policeman!" said both Crossthwaite and Kelly, with strong expletives. + +"A policeman doon in Manchester; I thought I kenned his face fra the first. +And when the rascal saw he'd let out too much, he wanted to make out that +he'd been a' along a spy for the Chartists, while he was makin' believe to +be a spy o' the goovernment's. Sae when he came that far, I just up wi' the +het water, and bleezed awa at him; an' noo I maun gang and het some mair +for my drap toddy." + +Sandy had a little vitriol in the house, so we took the combustible down +into the cellar, and tried it. It blazed up: but burnt the stone as much as +the reader may expect. We next tried it on a lump of wood. It just scorched +the place where it lay, and then went out; leaving poor Kelly perfectly +frantic with rage, terror, and disappointment. He dashed up-stairs, and out +into the street, on a wild-goose chase after the rascal, and we saw no more +of him that night. + +I relate a simple fact. I am afraid--perhaps, for the poor workmen's sake, +I should say I am glad, that it was not an unique one. Villains of this +kind, both in April and in June, mixed among the working men, excited +their worst passions by bloodthirsty declamations and extravagant promises +of success, sold them arms; and then, like the shameless wretch on whose +evidence Cuffy and Jones were principally convicted, bore witness against +their own victims, unblushingly declaring themselves to have been all +along the tools of the government. I entreat all those who disbelieve this +apparently prodigious assertion, to read the evidence given on the trial of +the John Street conspirators, and judge for themselves. + + * * * * * + +"The petition's filling faster than ever!" said Crossthwaite, as that +evening we returned to Mackaye's little back room. + +"Dirt's plenty," grumbled the old man, who had settled himself again to his +pipe, with his feet on the fender, and his head half way up the chimney. + +"Now, or never!" went on Crossthwaite, without minding him; "now, or never! +The manufacturing districts seem more firm than ever." + +"An' words cheap," commented Mackaye, _sotto voce_. + +"Well," I said, "Heaven keep us from the necessity of ulterior measures! +But what must be, must." + +"The government expect it, I can tell you. They're in a pitiable funk, I +hear. One regiment is ordered to Uxbridge already, because they daren't +trust it. They'll find soldiers are men, I do believe, after all." + +"Men they are," said Sandy; "an' therefore they'll no be fools eneugh to +stan' by an' see ye pu' down a' that is, to build up ye yourselves dinna +yet rightly ken what. Men? Ay, an' wi' mair common sense in them than some +that had mair opportunities." + +"I think I've settled everything," went on Crossthwaite, who seemed not to +have heard the last speech--"settled everything--for poor Katie, I mean. +If anything happens to me, she has friends at Cork--she thinks so at +least--and they'd get her out to service somewhere--God knows!" And his +face worked fearfully a minute. + +"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!" said I. + +"There are twa methods o' fulfilling that saw, I'm thinkin'. Impreemis, to +shoot your neebour; in secundis, to hang yoursel." + +"What do you mean by grumbling at the whole thing in this way, Mr. Mackaye? +Are you, too, going to shrink back from The Cause, now that liberty is at +the very doors?" + +"Ou, then, I'm stanch eneuch. I ha' laid in my ain stock o' weapons for the +fecht at Armageddon." + +"You don't mean it? What have you got?" + +"A braw new halter, an' a muckle nail. There's a gran' tough beam here +ayont the ingle, will haud me a' crouse and cantie, when the time comes." + +"What on earth do you mean?" asked we both together. + +"Ha' ye looked into the monster-petition?" + +"Of course we have, and signed it too!" + +"Monster? Ay, ferlie! Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen +ademptum. Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne. Leeberty, the bonnie +lassie, wi' a sealgh's fud to her! I'll no sign it. I dinna consort wi' +shoplifters, an' idiots, an' suckin' bairns--wi' long nose, an' short nose, +an' pug nose, an' seventeen Deuks o' Wellington, let alone a baker's dizen +o' Queens. It's no company, that, for a puir auld patriot!" + +"Why, my dear Mackaye," said I, "you know the Reform Bill petitions were +just as bad." + +"And the Anti-Corn-law ones, too, for that matter," said Crossthwaite. "You +know we can't help accidents; the petition will never be looked through." + +"It's always been the plan with Whigs and Tories, too!" + +"I ken that better than ye, I guess." + +"And isn't everything fair in a good cause?" said Crossthwaite. + +"Desperate men really can't be so dainty." + +"How lang ha' ye learnit that deil's lee, Johnnie? Ye were no o' that mind +five years agone, lad. Ha' ye been to Exeter Hall the while? A's fair in +the cause o' Mammon; in the cause o' cheap bread, that means cheap wages; +but in the cause o' God--wae's me, that ever I suld see this day ower +again! ower again! Like the dog to his vomit--just as it was ten, twenty, +fifty year agone. I'll just ha' a petition a' alane to mysel--I, an' a twa +or three honest men. Besides, ye're just eight days ower time wi' it." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Suld ha' sent it in the 1st of April, an' no the 10th; a' fool's day wud +ha' suited wi' it ferlie!" + +"Mr. Mackaye," said Crossthwaite, in a passion, "I shall certainly inform +the Convention of your extraordinary language!" + +"Do, laddie! do, then! An' tell 'em this, too"--and, as he rose, his whole +face and figure assumed a dignity, an awfulness, which I had never seen +before in him--"tell them that ha' driven out * * * * and * * * *, an' +every one that daur speak a word o' common sense, or common humanity--them +that stone the prophets, an' quench the Spirit o' God, and love a lie, an' +them that mak the same--them that think to bring about the reign o' love +an' britherhood wi' pikes an' vitriol bottles, murther an' blasphemy--tell +'em that ane o' fourscore years and mair--ane that has grawn grey in the +people's cause--that sat at the feet o' Cartwright, an' knelt by the +death-bed o' Rabbie Burns--ane that cheerit Burdett as he went to the +Touer, an' spent his wee earnings for Hunt an' Cobbett--ane that beheld the +shaking o' the nations in the Ninety-three, and heard the birth-shriek o' +a newborn world--ane that while he was yet a callant saw Liberty afar off, +an' seeing her was glad, as for a bonny bride, an' followed her through the +wilderness for threescore weary waeful years--sends them the last message +that e'er he'll send on airth: tell 'em that they're the slaves o' warse +than priests and kings--the slaves o' their ain lusts an' passions--the +slaves o' every loud-tongued knave an' mountebank that'll pamper them in +their self-conceit; and that the gude God'll smite 'em down, and bring 'em +to nought, and scatter 'em abroad, till they repent, an' get clean hearts +and a richt speerit within them, and learn His lesson that he's been trying +to teach 'em this threescore years--that the cause o' the people is the +cause o' Him that made the people; an' wae to them that tak' the deevil's +tools to do his wark wi'! Gude guide us!--What was yon, Alton, laddie?" + +"What?" + +"But I saw a spunk o' fire fa' into your bosom! I've na faith in siccan +heathen omens; but auld carlins wud say it's a sign o' death within the +year--save ye from it, my puir misguidit bairn! Aiblins a fire-flaught o' +my een, it might be--I've had them unco often, the day--" + +And he stooped down to the fire, and began to light his pipe, muttering to +himself-- + +"Saxty years o' madness! saxty years o' madness! How lang, O Lord, before +thou bring these puir daft bodies to their richt mind again?" + +We stood watching him, and interchanging looks--expecting something, we +knew not what. + +Suddenly he sank forward on his knees, with his hands on the bars of the +grate; we rushed forward, and caught him up. He turned his eyes up to me, +speechless, with a ghastly expression; one side of his face was all drawn +aside--and helpless as a child, he let us lift him to his bed, and there he +lay staring at the ceiling. + + * * * * * + +Four weary days passed by--it was the night of the ninth of April. In the +evening of that day his speech returned to him on a sudden--he seemed +uneasy about something, and several times asked Katie the day of the month. + +"Before the tenth--ay, we maun pray for that. I doubt but I'm ower hearty +yet--I canna bide to see the shame o' that day-- + + * * * * * + +"Na--I'll tak no potions nor pills--gin it were na for scruples o' +conscience, I'd apocartereeze a'thegither, after the manner o' the ancient +philosophers. But it's no' lawful, I misdoubt, to starve onesel." + +"Here is the doctor," said Katie. + +"Doctor? Wha ca'd for doctors? Canst thou administer to a mind diseased? +Can ye tak long nose, an' short nose, an' snub nose, an' seventeen Deuks +o' Wellington out o' my puddins? Will your castor oil, an' your calomel, +an' your croton, do that? D'ye ken a medicamentum that'll put brains into +workmen--? Non tribus Anti-cyrus! Tons o' hellebore--acres o' strait +waistcoats--a hall police-force o' head-doctors, winna do it. Juvat +insanire--this their way is their folly, as auld Benjamin o' Tudela +saith of the heathen. Heigho! 'Forty years lang was he grevit wi' this +generation, an' swore in his wrath that they suldna enter into his rest.' +Pulse? tongue? ay, shak your lugs, an' tak your fee, an' dinna keep auld +folk out o' their graves. Can ye sing?" + +The doctor meekly confessed his inability. + +"That's pity--or I'd gar ye sing Auld-lang-syne,-- + + "We twa hae paidlit in the burn-- + +"Aweel, aweel, aweel--" + + * * * * * + +Weary and solemn was that long night, as we sat there, with the crushing +weight of the morrow on our mind, watching by that death-bed, listening +hour after hour to the rambling soliloquies of the old man, as "he babbled +of green fields"; yet I verily believe that to all of us, especially to +poor little Katie, the active present interest of tending him kept us from +going all but mad with anxiety and excitement. But it was weary work:--and +yet, too, strangely interesting, as at times there came scraps of old +Scotch love-poetry, contrasting sadly with the grim withered lips that +uttered them--hints to me of some sorrow long since suffered, but never +healed. I had never heard him allude to such an event before but once, on +the first day of our acquaintance. + + "I went to the kirk, + My luve sat afore me; + I trow my twa een + Tauld him a sweet story. + + "Aye wakin o'-- + Wakin aye and weary-- + I thocht a' the kirk + Saw me and my deary. + +"'Aye wakin o'!'--Do ye think, noo, we sall ha' knowledge in the next warld +o' them we loved on earth? I askit that same o' Rab Burns ance; an' he +said, puir chiel, he 'didna ken ower well, we maun bide and see';--bide and +see--that's the gran' philosophy o' life, after a'. Aiblins folk'll ken +their true freens there; an' there'll be na mair luve coft and sauld for +siller-- + + "Gear and tocher is needit nane + I' the country whaur my luve is gane. + + * * * * * + +"Gin I had a true freen the noo! to gang down the wynd, an' find if it war +but an auld Abraham o' a blue-gown, wi' a bit crowd, or a fizzle-pipe, to +play me the Bush aboon Traquair! Na, na, na; it's singing the Lord's song +in a strange land, that wad be; an' I hope the application's no irreverent, +for ane that was rearit amang the hills o' God, an' the trees o' the forest +which he hath planted. + + "Oh the broom, and the bonny yellow broom, + The broom o' the Cowden-knowes. + +"Hech, but she wud lilt that bonnily! + + * * * * * + +"Did ye ever gang listering saumons by nicht? Ou, but it's braw sport, wi' +the scars an' the birks a' glowering out blude-red i' the torchlight, and +the bonnie hizzies skelping an' skirling on the bank-- + + * * * * * + +"There was a gran' leddy, a bonny leddy, came in and talked like an angel o' +God to puir auld Sandy, anent the salvation o' his soul. But I tauld her +no' to fash hersel. It's no my view o' human life, that a man's sent into +the warld just to save his soul, an' creep out again. An' I said I wad +leave the savin' o' my soul to Him that made my soul; it was in richt gude +keepin' there, I'd warrant. An' then she was unco fleyed when she found I +didna haud wi' the Athanasian creed. An' I tauld her, na; if He that died +on cross was sic a ane as she and I teuk him to be, there was na that pride +nor spite in him, be sure, to send a puir auld sinful, guideless body to +eternal fire, because he didna a'thegither understand the honour due to his +name." + +"Who was this lady?" + +He did not seem to know; and Katie had never heard of her before--"some +district visitor" or other. + + * * * * * + +"I sair misdoubt but the auld creeds are in the right anent Him, after a'. +I'd gie muckle to think it--there's na comfort as it is. Aiblins there +might be a wee comfort in that, for a poor auld worn-out patriot. But it's +ower late to change. I tauld her that, too, ance. It's ower late to put new +wine into auld bottles. I was unco drawn to the high doctrines ance, when +I was a bit laddie, an' sat in the wee kirk by my minnie an' my daddie--a +richt stern auld Cameronian sort o' body he was, too; but as I grew, and +grew, the bed was ower short for a man to stretch himsel thereon, an' the +plaidie ower strait for a man to fauld himself therein; and so I had to +gang my gate a' naked in the matter o' formulae, as Maister Tummas has it." + +"Ah! do send for a priest, or a clergyman!" said Katie, who partly +understood his meaning. + +"Parson? He canna pit new skin on auld scars. Na bit stickit curate-laddie +for me, to gang argumentin' wi' ane that's auld enough to be his +gran'father. When the parsons will hear me anent God's people, then I'll +hear them anent God. + + "--Sae I'm wearing awa, Jean, + To the land o' the leal-- + +"Gin I ever get thither. Katie, here, hauds wi' purgatory, ye ken! where +souls are burnt clean again--like baccy pipes-- + + "When Bazor-brigg is ower and past, + Every night and alle; + To Whinny Muir thou comest at last, + And God receive thy sawle. + + "Gin hosen an' shoon thou gavest nane + Every night and alle; + The whins shall pike thee intil the bane, + And God receive thy sawle. + +"Amen. There's mair things aboon, as well as below, than are dreamt o' +in our philosophy. At least, where'er I go, I'll meet no long nose, nor +short nose, nor snub nose patriots there; nor puir gowks stealing the +deil's tools to do God's wark wi'. Out among the eternities an' the +realities--it's no that dreary outlook, after a', to find truth an' +fact--naught but truth an' fact--e'en beside the worm that dieth not, and +the fire that is not quenched!" + +"God forbid!" said Katie. + +"God do whatsoever shall please Him, Katie--an' that's aye gude like +Himsel'. Shall no the Judge of all the earth do right--right--right?" + +And murmuring that word of words to himself, over and over, more and more +faintly, he turned slowly over, and seemed to slumber-- + +Some half hour passed before we tried to stir him. He was dead. + +And the candles waned grey, and the great light streamed in through every +crack and cranny, and the sun had risen on the Tenth of April. What would +be done before the sun had set? + +What would be done? Just what we had the might to do; and therefore, +according to the formula on which we were about to act, that mights are +rights, just what we had a right to do--nothing. Futility, absurdity, +vanity, and vexation of spirit. I shall make my next a short chapter. It is +a day to be forgotten--and forgiven. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +THE TENTH OF APRIL. + + +And he was gone at last! Kind women, whom his unknown charities had saved +from shame, laid him out duly, and closed his eyes, and bound up that face +that never would beam again with genial humour, those lips that would +never again speak courage and counsel to the sinful, the oppressed, the +forgotten. And there he lay, the old warrior, dead upon his shield; worn +out by long years of manful toil in The People's Cause; and, saddest +thought of all, by disappointment in those for whom he spent his soul. +True, he was aged; no one knew how old. He had said, more than eighty +years; but we had shortened his life, and we knew it. He would never see +that deliverance for which he had been toiling ever since the days when as +a boy he had listened to Tooke and Cartwright, and the patriarchs of the +people's freedom. Bitter, bitter were our thoughts, and bitter were our +tears, as Crossthwaite and I stood watching that beloved face, now in death +refined to a grandeur, to a youthful simplicity and delicacy, which we had +never seen on it before--calm and strong--the square jaws set firm even +in death--the lower lip still clenched above the upper, as if in a divine +indignation and everlasting protest, even in the grave, against the +devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone--the old lion, worn out with many +wounds, dead in his cage. Where could we replace him? There were gallant +men amongst us, eloquent, well-read, earnest--men whose names will ring +through this land ere long--men who had boon taught wisdom, even as he, by +the sinfulness, the apathy, the ingratitude, as well as by the sufferings +of their fellows. But where should we two find again the learning, the +moderation, the long experience, above all the more than women's tenderness +of him whom we had lost? And at that time, too, of all others! Alas! we had +despised his counsel: wayward and fierce we would have none of his reproof; +and now God has withdrawn him from us; the righteous was taken away from +the evil to come. For we knew that evil was coming. We felt all along that +we should _not_ succeed. But we were desperate; and his death made us more +desperate; still at the moment it drew us nearer to each other. Yes--we +were rudderless upon a roaring sea, and all before us blank with lurid +blinding mist: but still we were together, to live and die; and as we +looked into each other's eyes, and clasped each other's hands above the +dead man's face, we felt that there was love between us, as of Jonathan and +David, passing the love of woman. + +Few words passed. Even our passionate artizan-nature, so sensitive +and voluble in general, in comparison with the cold reserve of the +field-labourer and the gentleman, was hushed in silent awe between the +thought of the past and the thought of the future. We felt ourselves +trembling between two worlds. We felt that to-morrow must decide our +destiny--and we felt rightly, though little we guessed what that destiny +would be! + +But it was time to go. We had to prepare for the meeting, We must be at +Kennington Common within three hours at furthest; and Crossthwaite hurried +away, leaving Katie and me to watch the dead. + +And then came across me the thought of another deathbed--my mother's--How +she had lain and lain, while I was far away--And then I wondered whether +she had suffered much, or faded away at last in a peaceful sleep, as he +had--And then I wondered how her corpse had looked; and pictured it to +myself, lying in the little old room day after day, till they screwed the +coffin down--before I came!--Cruel! Did she look as calm, as grand in death +as he who lay there? And as I watched the old man's features, I seemed +to trace in them the strangest likeness to my mother's. The strangest +likeness! I could not shake it off. It became intense--miraculous. Was it +she, or was it he, who lay there? I shook myself and rose. My loins ached, +my limbs were heavy; my brain and eyes swam round. I must be over fatigued +by excitement and sleeplessness. I would go down stairs into the fresh air, +and shake it off. + +As I came down the passage, a woman, dressed in black, was standing at the +door, speaking to one of the lodgers. "And he is dead! Oh, if I had but +known sooner that he was even ill!" + +That voice--that figure-surely, I knew them!--them, at least, there was +no mistaking! Or, was it another phantom of my disordered brain! I pushed +forward to the door, and as I did so, she turned and our eyes met full. It +was she--Lady Ellerton! sad, worn, transformed by widow's weeds, but that +face was like no other's still. Why did I drop my eyes and draw back at the +first glance like a guilty coward? She beckoned me towards her, went out +into the street, and herself began the conversation, from which I shrank, I +know not why. + +"When did he die?" + +"Just at sunrise this morning. But how came you here to visit him? Were you +the lady who, as he said, came to him a few days since?" + +She did not answer my question. "At sunrise this morning?--A fitting time +for him to die, before he sees the ruin and disgrace of those for whom he +laboured. And you, too, I hear, are taking your share in this projected +madness and iniquity?" + +"What right have you," I asked, bristling up at a sudden suspicion that +crossed me, "to use such words about me?" + +"Recollect," she answered, mildly but firmly, "your conduct, three years +ago, at D * * * *." + +"What," I said, "was it not proved upon my trial, that I exerted all my +powers, endangered my very life, to prevent outrage in that case?" + +"It was proved upon your trial," she replied, in a marked tone; "but we +were informed, and alas! from authority only too good, namely, from that of +an ear-witness, of the sanguinary and ferocious language which you were not +afraid to use at the meeting in London, only two nights before the riot." + +I turned white with rage and indignation. + +"Tell me," I said--"tell me, if you have any honour, who dared to forge +such an atrocious calumny! No! you need not tell me. I see well enough now. +He should have told you that I exposed myself that night to insult, not by +advocating, but by opposing violence, as I have always done--as I would +now, were not I desperate--hopeless of any other path to liberty. And as +for this coming struggle, have I not written to my cousin, humiliating as +it was to me, to beg him to warn you all from me, lest--" + +I could not finish the sentence. + +"You wrote? He has warned us, but he never mentioned your name. He spoke of +his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his +clerical character." + +"The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually received a letter +from a Chartist; but I wrote--on my honour I wrote--a week ago; and +received no word of answer!" + +"Is this true?" she asked. + +"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who knows not whether +he shall live to see the set of sun!" + +"Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection?" + +"I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what they do I shall do. +Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailor-poet, left +the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison, without a +sign, a hint of mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me off; and, +in casting me off, it has sent me off to my own people, where I should +have stayed from the beginning. Now I am at my post, because I am among my +class. If they triumph peacefully, I triumph with them. If they need blood +to gain their rights, be it so. Let the blood be upon the head of those who +refuse, not those who demand. At least, I shall be with my own people. And +if I die, what better thing on earth can happen to me?" + +"But the law?" she said. + +"Do not talk to me of law! I know it too well in practice to be moved by +any theories about it. Laws are no law, but tyranny, when the few make +them, in order to oppress the many by them." + +"Oh!" she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which I had never +heard from her before, "stop--for God's sake, stop! You know not what you +are saying--what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before--that I +had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait--there is a +deliverance for you! but never in this path--never. And just while I, and +nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling +you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it +impossible!" + +There was a wild sincerity in her words--an almost imploring tenderness in +her tone. + +"So young!" said she; "so young to be lost thus!" + +I was intensely moved. I felt, I knew, that she had a message for me. I +felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have +submitted mine; and, for one moment, all the angel and all the devil in me +wrestled for the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one moment.... +No! all the pride, the spite, the suspicion, the prejudice of years, rolled +back upon me. "An aristocrat! and she, too, the one who has kept me from +Lillian!" And in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within +me, I answered with a flippant sneer-- + +"Yes, madam! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender!--Thanks to the +mercies of the upper classes!" + +Did she turn away in indignation? No, by Heaven! there was nothing upon her +face but the intensest yearning pity. If she had spoken again she would +have conquered; but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of +thoughts flashed across me. + +"Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to ----" and I +stopped. + +"He is." + +"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!" +And without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury +of despair. + + * * * * * + +I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have +no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had +arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we +had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of +London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which +we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had +in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The +practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with +the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere +chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even +undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had +with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility +exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of +thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful +proportion were of those very rascal classes, against whom we ourselves had +offered to be sworn in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him +after all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment, by some +problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffy, the honestest, if not +the wisest, speaker there, leapt off the waggon, exclaiming that we were +all "humbugged and betrayed"; and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, +drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way home--for +the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly--while the +monster-petition crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab, to be dragged to +the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter--"inextinguishable +laughter," as of Tennyson's Epicurean Gods-- + + Careless of mankind. + For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled + Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled + Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world. + There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, + Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, + Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, _and praying hands. + But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song, + Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong, + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong_ + Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, + Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil, + Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil; + Till they perish, and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in hell + Suffer endless anguish!-- + +Truly--truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves +suppose! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +THE LOWEST DEEP. + + +Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the streets that evening, +careless whither I went. The People's Cause was lost--the Charter a +laughing-stock. That the party which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it +is fancied, education and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded, +to appeal to brute force for self-defence--that thought gave me a savage +joy; but that it should have conquered by that last, lowest resource!--That +the few should be still stronger than the many, or the many still too +cold-hearted and coward to face the few--that sickened me. I hated the +well-born young special constables whom I passed, because they would have +fought. I hated the gent and shop-keeper special constables, because they +would have run away. I hated my own party, because they had gone too +far--because they had not gone far enough. I hated myself, because I had +not produced some marvellous effect--though what that was to have been I +could not tell--and hated myself all the more for that ignorance. + +A group of effeminate shop-keepers passed me, shouting, "God save the +Queen!" "Hypocrites!" I cried in my heart--"they mean 'God save our shops!' +Liars! They keep up willingly the useful calumny, that their slaves and +victims are disloyal as well as miserable!" + +I was utterly abased--no, not utterly; for my self-contempt still vented +itself--not in forgiveness, but in universal hatred and defiance. Suddenly +I perceived my cousin, laughing and jesting with a party of fashionable +young specials: I shrank from him; and yet, I know not why, drew as near +him as I could, unobserved--near enough to catch the words. + +"Upon my honour, Locke, I believe you are a Chartist yourself at heart." + +"At least I am no Communist," said he, in a significant tone. "There is one +little bit of real property which I have no intention of sharing with my +neighbours." + +"What, the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish Square?" + +"That's my business." + +"Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now? Well, I am invited +to the wedding, remember." + +He pushed on laughingly, without answering. I followed him fast--"near +Cavendish Square!"--the very part of the town where Lillian lived! I had +had, as yet, a horror of going near it; but now an intolerable suspicion +scourged me forward, and I dogged his steps, hiding behind pillars, and at +the corners of streets, and then running on, till I got sight of him again. +He went through Cavendish Square, up Harley Street--was it possible? I +gnashed my teeth at the thought. But it must be so. He stopped at the +dean's house, knocked, and entered without parley. + +In a minute I was breathless on the door-step, and knocked. I had no plan, +no object, except the wild wish to see my own despair. I never thought +of the chances of being recognized by the servants, or of anything else, +except of Lillian by my cousin's side. + +The footman came out smiling, "What did I want?" + +"I--I--Mr. Locke." + +"Well you needn't be in such a hurry!" (with a significant grin). "Mr. +Locke's likely to be busy for a few minutes yet, I expect." + +Evidently the man did not know me. + +"Tell him that--that a person wishes to speak to him on particular +business." Though I had no more notion what that business was than the man +himself. + +"Sit down in the hall." + +And I heard the fellow, a moment afterwards, gossiping and laughing with +the maids below about the "young couple." + +To sit down was impossible; my only thought was--where was Lillian? + +Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear. His! yes--and hers too--soft +and low. What devil prompted me to turn eavesdropper? to run headlong +into temptation? I was close to the dining-room door, but they were not +there--evidently they were in the back room, which, as I knew, opened into +it with folding-doors. I--I must confess all.--Noiselessly, with craft like +a madman's, I turned the handle, slipped in as stealthily as a cat--the +folding-doors were slightly open. I had a view of all that passed within. +A horrible fascination seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them, in spite of +myself. Honour, shame, despair, bade me turn away, but in vain. + +I saw them.--How can I write it? Yet I will.--I saw them sitting together +on the sofa. Their arms were round each other. Her head lay upon his +breast; he bent over her with an intense gaze, as of a basilisk, I thought; +how do I know that it was not the fierceness of his love? Who could have +helped loving her? + +Suddenly she raised her head, and looked up in his face--her eyes brimming +with tenderness, her cheeks burning with mingled delight and modesty--their +lips met, and clung together.... It seemed a life--an eternity--before they +parted again. Then the spell was broken, and I rushed from the room. + +Faint, giddy, and blind, I just recollect leaning against the wall of the +staircase. He came hastily out, and started as he saw me. My face told all. + +"What? Eavesdropping?" he said, in a tone of unutterable scorn. I answered +nothing, but looked stupidly and fixedly in his face, while he glared at me +with that keen, burning, intolerable eye. I longed to spring at his throat, +but that eye held me as the snake's holds the deer. At last I found words. + +"Traitor! everywhere--in everything--tricking me--supplanting me--in my +friends--in my love!" + +"Your love? Yours?" And the fixed eye still glared upon me. "Listen, cousin +Alton! The strong and the weak have been matched for the same prize: and +what wonder, if the strong man conquers? Go and ask Lillian how she likes +the thought of being a Communist's love!" + +As when, in a nightmare, we try by a desperate effort to break the spell, I +sprang forward, and struck at him, he put my hand by carelessly, and felled +me bleeding to the ground. I recollect hardly anything more, till I found +myself thrust into the street by sneering footmen, and heard them call +after me "Chartist" and "Communist" as I rushed along the pavement, +careless where I went. + +I strode and staggered on through street after street, running blindly +against passengers, dashing under horses' heads, heedless of warnings and +execrations, till I found myself, I know not how, on Waterloo Bridge. I had +meant to go there when I left the door. I knew that at least--and now I was +there. + +I buried myself in a recess of the bridge, and stared around and up and +down. + +I was alone--deserted even by myself. Mother, sister, friends, love, the +idol of my life, were all gone. I could have borne that. But to be shamed, +and know that I deserved it; to be deserted by my own honour, self-respect, +strength of will--who can bear that? + +I could have borne it, had one thing been left--faith in my own +destiny--the inner hope that God had called me to do a work for him. + +"What drives the Frenchman to suicide?" I asked myself, arguing ever even +in the face of death and hell--"His faith in nothing but his own lusts and +pleasures; and when they are gone, then comes the pan of charcoal--and all +is over. What drives the German? His faith in nothing but his own brain. He +has fallen down and worshipped that miserable 'Ich' of his, and made that, +and not God's will, the centre and root of his philosophy, his poetry, and +his self-idolizing aesthetics; and when it fails him, then for prussic acid, +and nonentity. Those old Romans, too--why, they are the very experimentum +crucis of suicide! As long as they fancied that they had a calling to serve +the state, they could live on and suffer. But when they found no more work +left for them, then they could die--as Porcia died--as Cato--as I ought. +What is there left for me to do? outcast, disgraced, useless, decrepit--" + +I looked out over the bridge into the desolate night. Below me the dark +moaning river-eddies hurried downward. The wild west-wind howled past me, +and leapt over the parapet downward. The huge reflexion of Saint Paul's, +the great tap-roots of light from lamp and window that shone upon the lurid +stream, pointed down--down--down. A black wherry shot through the arch +beneath me, still and smoothly downward. My brain began to whirl madly--I +sprang upon the step.--A man rushed past me, clambered on the parapet, and +threw up his arms wildly.--A moment more, and he would have leapt into the +stream. The sight recalled me to my senses--say, rather, it reawoke in me +the spirit of manhood. I seized him by the arm, tore him down upon the +pavement, and held him, in spite of his frantic struggles. It was Jemmy +Downes! Gaunt, ragged, sodden, blear-eyed, drivelling, the worn-out +gin-drinker stood, his momentary paroxysm of strength gone, trembling and +staggering. + +"Why won't you let a cove die? Why won't you let a cove die? They're all +dead--drunk, and poisoned, and dead! What is there left?"--he burst out +suddenly in his old ranting style--"what is there left on earth to live +for? The prayers of liberty are answered by the laughter of tyrants; her +sun is sunk beneath the ocean wave, and her pipe put out by the raging +billows of aristocracy! Those starving millions of Kennington Common--where +are they? Where? I axes you," he cried fiercely, raising his voice to a +womanish scream--"where are they?" + +"Gone home to bed, like sensible people; and you had better go too." + +"Bed! I sold ours a month ago; but we'll go. Come along, and I'll show you +my wife and family; and we'll have a tea-party--Jacob's Island tea. Come +along! + + "Flea, flea, unfortunate flea! + Bereft of his wife and his small family!" + +He clutched my arm, and dragging me off towards the Surrey side, turned +down Stamford Street. + +I followed half perforce; and the man seemed quite demented--whether with +gin or sorrow I could not tell. As he strode along the pavement, he kept +continually looking back, with a perplexed terrified air, as if expecting +some fearful object. + +"The rats!--the rats! don't you see 'em coming out of the gullyholes, +atween the area railings--dozens and dozens?" + +"No; I saw none." + +"You lie; I hear their tails whisking; there's their shiny hats a +glistening, and every one on 'em with peelers' staves! Quick! quick! or +they'll have me to the station-house." + +"Nonsense!" I said; "we are free men! What are the policemen to us?" + +"You lie!" cried he, with a fearful oath, and a wrench at my arm which +almost threw me down. "Do you call a sweater's man a free man?" + +"You a sweater's man?" + +"Ay!" with another oath. "My men ran away--folks said I drank, too; but +here I am; and I, that sweated others, I'm sweated myself--and I'm a slave! +I'm a slave--a negro slave, I am, you aristocrat villain!" + +"Mind me, Downes; if you will go quietly, I will go with you; but if you do +not let go of my arm, I give you in charge to the first policeman I meet." + +"Oh, don't, don't!" whined the miserable wretch, as he almost fell on +his knees, gin-drinkers' tears running down his face, "or I shall be too +late.--And then, the rats'll get in at the roof, and up through the floor, +and eat 'em all up, and my work too--the grand new three-pound coat that +I've been stitching at this ten days, for the sum of one half-crown +sterling--and don't I wish I may see the money? Come on, quick; there +are the rats, close behind!" And he dashed across the broad roaring +thoroughfare of Bridge Street, and hurrying almost at a run down Tooley +Street, plunged into the wilderness of Bermondsey. + +He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley, where a dirty gas-lamp +just served to make darkness visible, and show the patched windows and +rickety doorways of the crazy houses, whose upper stories were lost in a +brooding cloud of fog; and the pools of stagnant water at our feet; and the +huge heap of cinders which filled up the waste end of the alley--a dreary, +black, formless mound, on which two or three spectral dogs prowled up and +down after the offal, appearing and vanishing like dark imps in and out of +the black misty chaos beyond. + +The neighbourhood was undergoing, as it seemed, "improvements" of that +peculiar metropolitan species which consists in pulling down the dwellings +of the poor, and building up rich men's houses instead; and great +buildings, within high temporary palings, had already eaten up half the +little houses; as the great fish, and the great estates, and the great +shopkeepers, eat up the little ones of their species--by the law of +competition, lately discovered to be the true creator and preserver of the +universe. There they loomed up, the tall bullies, against the dreary sky, +looking down, with their grim, proud, stony visages, on the misery which +they were driving out of one corner, only to accumulate and intensify it in +another. + +The house at which we stopped was the last in the row; all its companions +had been pulled down; and there it stood, leaning out with one naked ugly +side into the gap, and stretching out long props, like feeble arms and +crutches, to resist the work of demolition. + +A group of slatternly people were in the entry, talking loudly, and as +Downes pushed by them, a woman seized him by the arm. + +"Oh! you unnatural villain!--To go away after your drink, and leave all +them poor dear dead corpses locked up, without even letting a body go in to +stretch them out!" + +"And breeding the fever, too, to poison the whole house!" growled one. + +"The relieving officer's been here, my cove," said another, "and he's gone +for a peeler and a search warrant to break open the door, I can tell you!" + +But Downes pushed past unheeding, unlocked a door at the end of the +passage, thrust me in, locked it again, and then rushed across the room in +chase of two or three rats, who vanished into cracks and holes. + +And what a room! A low lean-to with wooden walls, without a single article +of furniture; and through the broad chinks of the floor shone up as it +were ugly glaring eyes, staring at us. They were the reflexions of the +rushlight in the sewer below. The stench was frightful--the air heavy with +pestilence. The first breath I drew made my heart sink, and my stomach +turn. But I forgot everything in the object which lay before me, as Downes +tore a half-finished coat off three corpses laid side by side on the bare +floor. + +There was his little Irish wife:--dead--and naked; the wasted white limbs +gleamed in the lurid light; the unclosed eyes stared, as if reproachfully, +at the husband whose drunkenness had brought her there to kill her with +the pestilence; and on each side of her a little, shrivelled, impish, +child-corpse,--the wretched man had laid their arms round the dead mother's +neck--and there they slept, their hungering and wailing over at last for +ever; the rats had been busy already with them--but what matter to them +now? + +"Look!" he cried; "I watched 'em dying! Day after day I saw the devils come +up through the cracks, like little maggots and beetles, and all manner of +ugly things, creeping down their throats; and I asked 'em, and they said +they were the fever devils." + +It was too true; the poisonous exhalations had killed them. The wretched +man's delirium tremens had given that horrible substantiality to the +poisonous fever gases. + +Suddenly Downes turned on me, almost menacingly. "Money! money! I want some +gin!" + +I was thoroughly terrified--and there was no shame in feeling fear, locked +up with a madman far my superior in size and strength, in so ghastly a +place. But the shame and the folly too, would have been in giving way to my +fear; and with a boldness half assumed, half the real fruit of excitement +and indignation at the horrors I beheld, I answered-- + +"If I had money, I would give you none. What do you want with gin? Look +at the fruits of your accursed tippling. If you had taken my advice, +my poor fellow," I went on, gaining courage as I spoke, "and become a +water-drinker, like me--" + +"Curse you and your water-drinking! If you had had no water to drink +or wash with for two years but that--that," pointing to the foul ditch +below--"if you had emptied the slops in there with one hand, and filled +your kettle with the other--" + +"Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking water?" + +"Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall, too--you +shall!" he cried, with a fearful oath, "and then see if you don't run off +to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of your mouth. Drink? and who +can help drinking, with his stomach turned with such hell-broth as that--or +such a hell's blast as this air is here, ready to vomit from morning till +night with the smells? I'll show you. You shall drink a bucket full of it, +as sure as you live, you shall." + +And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony, which hung over the +ditch. + +I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle too. I beat +furiously on it, and called for help. Two gruff authoritative voices were +heard in the passage. + +"Let us in; I'm the policeman!" + +"Let me out, or mischief will happen!" + +The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door; and just as it +burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed into the horrible den, a +heavy splash was heard outside. + +"He has fallen into the ditch!" + +"He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man," shouted one of the +crowd behind. + +We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the policeman's lantern glared +over the ghastly scene--along the double row of miserable house-backs, +which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch--over strange rambling +jetties, and balconies, and sleeping-sheds, which hung on rotting piles +over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming +and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish grave-lights--over +bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, +floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth--over the slow sullen rows +of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending +up, as they stirred, hot breaths of miasma--the only sign that a spark of +humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that +foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up +at me through the slimy water; but no, it was as opaque as stone. + +I shuddered and went in again, to see slatternly gin-smelling women +stripping off their clothes--true women even there--to cover the poor naked +corpses; and pointing to the bruises which told a tale of long tyranny +and cruelty; and mingling their lamentations with stories of shrieks and +beating, and children locked up for hours to starve; and the men looked on +sullenly, as if they too were guilty, or rushed out to relieve themselves +by helping to find the drowned body. Ugh! it was the very mouth of hell, +that room. And in the midst of all the rout, the relieving officer stood +impassive, jotting down scraps of information, and warning us to appear the +next day, to state what we knew before the magistrates. Needless hypocrisy +of law! Too careless to save the woman and children from brutal tyranny, +nakedness, starvation!--Too superstitious to offend its idol of vested +interests, by protecting the poor man against his tyrants, the house-owning +shopkeepers under whose greed the dwellings of the poor become nests of +filth and pestilence, drunkenness and degradation. Careless, superstitious, +imbecile law!--leaving the victims to die unhelped, and then, when the +fever and the tyranny has done its work, in thy sanctimonious prudishness, +drugging thy respectable conscience by a "searching inquiry" as to how it +all happened--lest, forsooth, there should have been "foul play!" Is the +knife or the bludgeon, then, the only foul play, and not the cesspool and +the curse of Rabshakeh? Go through Bermondsey or Spitalfields, St. Giles's +or Lambeth, and see if _there_ is not foul play enough already--to be tried +hereafter at a more awful coroner's inquest than thou thinkest of! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +DREAMLAND. + + +It must have been two o'clock in the morning before I reached my lodgings. +Too much exhausted to think, I hurried to my bed. I remember now that I +reeled strangely as I went up-stairs. I lay down, and was asleep in an +instant. + +How long I had slept I know not, when I awoke with a strange confusion and +whirling in my brain, and an intolerable weight and pain about my back and +loins. By the light of the gas-lamp I saw a figure standing at the foot of +my bed. I could not discern the face, but I knew instinctively that it was +my mother. I called to her again and again, but she did not answer. She +moved slowly away, and passed out through the wall of the room. + +I tried to follow her, but could not. An enormous, unutterable weight +seemed to lie upon me. The bedclothes grew and grew before me, and upon +me, into a vast mountain, millions of miles in height. Then it seemed all +glowing red, like the cone of a volcano. I heard the roaring of the fires +within, the rattling of the cinders down the heaving slope. A river ran +from its summit; and up that river-bed it seemed I was doomed to climb +and climb for ever, millions and millions of miles upwards, against the +rushing stream. The thought was intolerable, and I shrieked aloud. A raging +thirst had seized me. I tried to drink the river-water: but it was boiling +hot--sulphurous--reeking of putrefaction. Suddenly I fancied that I could +pass round the foot of the mountain; and jumbling, as madmen will, the +sublime and the ridiculous, I sprang up to go round the foot of my bed, +which was the mountain. + +I recollect lying on the floor. I recollect the people of the house, who +had been awoke by my shriek and my fall, rushing in and calling to me. I +could not rise or answer. I recollect a doctor; and talk about brain fever +and delirium. It was true. I was in a raging fever. And my fancy, long +pent-up and crushed by circumstances, burst out in uncontrollable wildness, +and swept my other faculties with it helpless away over all heaven and +earth, presenting to me, as in a vast kaleidoscope, fantastic symbols of +all I had ever thought, or read, or felt. + +That fancy of the mountain returned; but I had climbed it now. I was +wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya. On my right the line of +snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky. +Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me. As I +looked down the abysses, I could see far below, through the thin veils of +blue mist that wandered in the glens, the silver spires of giant deodars, +and huge rhododendrons glowing like trees of flame. The longing of my +life to behold that cradle of mankind was satisfied. My eyes revelled in +vastness, as they swept over the broad flat jungle at the mountain foot, +a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses, furrowed with the paths of the +buffalo and rhinoceros, with barren sandy water-courses, desolate pools, +and here and there a single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by +mountain floods; and far beyond, the vast plains of Hindostan, enlaced with +myriad silver rivers and canals, tanks and rice-fields, cities with their +mosques and minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the +boundless horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow +sandstone. I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous +shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, +struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose +and tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres +round my head; and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping jaws, to +clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing the pillars of the +portico, bent them like reeds: an earthquake shook the hills--great sheets +of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the valleys--a tornado swept +through the temple halls, which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm: +a crash--a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air--choked me--blinded +me--buried me-- + + * * * * * + +And Eleanor came by, and took my soul in the palm of her hand, as the +angels did Faust's, and carried it to a cavern by the seaside, and dropped +it in; and I fell and fell for ages. And all the velvet mosses, rock +flowers, and sparkling spars and ores, fell with me, round me, in showers +of diamonds, whirlwinds of emerald and ruby, and pattered into the sea that +moaned below, and were quenched; and the light lessened above me to one +small spark, and vanished; and I was in darkness, and turned again to my +dust. + + * * * * * + +And I was at the lowest point of created life; a madrepore rooted to the +rock, fathoms below the tide-mark; and worst of all, my individuality was +gone. I was not one thing, but many things--a crowd of innumerable polypi; +and I grew and grew, and the more I grew the more I divided, and multiplied +thousand and ten thousandfold. If I could have thought, I should have gone +mad at it; but I could only feel. + +And I heard Eleanor and Lillian talking, as they floated past me through +the deep, for they were two angels; and Lillian said, "When will he be one +again?" + +And Eleanor said, "He who falls from the golden ladder must climb through +ages to its top. He who tears himself in pieces by his lusts, ages only can +make him one again. The madrepore shall become a shell, and the shell a +fish, and the fish a bird, and the bird a beast; and then he shall become a +man again, and see the glory of the latter days." + + * * * * * + +And I was a soft crab, under a stone on the sea-shore. With infinite +starvation, and struggling, and kicking, I had got rid of my armour, shield +by shield, and joint by joint, and cowered, naked and pitiable, in the +dark, among dead shells and ooze. Suddenly the stone was turned up; and +there was my cousin's hated face laughing at me, and pointing me out +to Lillian. She laughed too, as I looked up, sneaking, ashamed, and +defenceless, and squared up at him with my soft useless claws. Why should +she not laugh? Are not crabs, and toads, and monkeys, and a hundred other +strange forms of animal life, jests of nature--embodiments of a divine +humour, at which men are meant to laugh and be merry? But, alas! my cousin, +as he turned away, thrust the stone back with his foot, and squelched me +flat. + + * * * * * + +And I was a remora, weak and helpless, till I could attach myself to some +living thing; and then I had power to stop the largest ship. And Lillian +was a flying fish, and skimmed over the crests of the waves on gauzy wings. +And my cousin was a huge shark, rushing after her, greedy and open-mouthed; +and I saw her danger, and clung to him, and held him back; and just as I +had stopped him, she turned and swam back into his open jaws. + + * * * * * + +Sand--sand--nothing but sand! The air was full of sand drifting over +granite temples, and painted kings and triumphs, and the skulls of a former +world; and I was an ostrich, flying madly before the simoon wind, and the +giant sand pillars, which stalked across the plains, hunting me down. And +Lillian was an Amazon queen, beautiful, and cold, and cruel; and she rode +upon a charmed horse, and carried behind her on her saddle a spotted ounce, +which, was my cousin; and, when I came near her, she made him leap down +and course me. And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable +sand, till he sprung on me, and dragged me down. And as I lay quivering +and dying, she reined in her horse above me, and looked down at me with +beautiful, pitiless eyes; and a wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings, +and she took them and wreathed them in her golden hair. The broad and +blood-red sun sank down beneath the sand, and the horse and the Amazon and +the ostrich plumes shone blood-red in his lurid rays. + + * * * * * + +I was a mylodon among South American forests--a vast sleepy mass, my +elephantine limbs and yard-long talons contrasting strangely with the +little meek rabbit's head, furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, +and a very small kernel of brains, whose highest consciousness was the +enjoyment of muscular strength. Where I had picked up the sensation which +my dreams realized for me, I know not: my waking life, alas! had never +given me experience of it. Has the mind power of creating sensations for +itself? Surely it does so, in those delicious dreams about flying which +haunt us poor wingless mortals, which would seem to give my namesake's +philosophy the lie. However that may be, intense and new was the animal +delight, to plant my hinder claws at some tree-foot deep into the black +rotting vegetable-mould which steamed rich gases up wherever it was +pierced, and clasp my huge arms round the stem of some palm or tree-fern; +and then slowly bring my enormous weight and muscle to bear upon it, till +the stem bent like a withe, and the laced bark cracked, and the fibres +groaned and shrieked, and the roots sprung up out of the soil; and then, +with a slow circular wrench, the whole tree was twisted bodily out of the +ground, and the maddening tension of my muscles suddenly relaxed, and I +sank sleepily down upon the turf, to browse upon the crisp tart foliage, +and fall asleep in the glare of sunshine which streamed through the new +gap in the green forest roof. Much as I had envied the strong, I had never +before suspected the delight of mere physical exertion. I now understood +the wild gambols of the dog, and the madness which makes the horse gallop +and strain onwards till he drops and dies. They fulfil their nature, as I +was doing, and in that is always happiness. + +But I did more--whether from mere animal destructiveness, or from the +spark of humanity which was slowly rekindling in me, I began to delight in +tearing up trees for its own sake. I tried my strength daily on thicker and +thicker boles. I crawled up to the high palm-tops, and bowed them down by +my weight. My path through the forest was marked, like that of a tornado, +by snapped and prostrate stems and withering branches. Had I been a few +degrees more human, I might have expected a retribution for my sin. I had +fractured my own skull three or four times already. I used often to pass +the carcases of my race, killed, as geologists now find them, by the fall +of the trees they had overthrown; but still I went on, more and more +reckless, a slave, like many a so-called man, to the mere sense of power. + +One day I wandered to the margin of the woods, and climbing a tree, +surveyed a prospect new to me. For miles and miles, away to the white +line of the smoking Cordillera, stretched a low rolling plain; one vast +thistle-bed, the down of which flew in grey gauzy clouds before a soft +fitful breeze; innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it, and bent +the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose above the level +thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down. The +forest leaves seemed tasteless; my stomach sickened at them; nothing but +that tree would satisfy me; and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with +half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried even my bulk. + +At last, after days of painful crawling, I dragged my unwieldiness to the +tree-foot. Around it the plain was bare, and scored by burrows and heaps +of earth, among which gold, some in dust, some in great knots and ingots, +sparkled everywhere in the sun, in fearful contrast to the skulls and bones +which lay bleaching round. Some were human, some were those of vast and +monstrous beasts. I knew (one knows everything in dreams) that they had +been slain by the winged ants, as large as panthers, who snuffed and +watched around over the magic treasure. Of them I felt no fear; and they +seemed not to perceive me, as I crawled, with greedy, hunger-sharpened +eyes, up to the foot of the tree. It seemed miles in height. Its stem was +bare and polished like a palm's, and above a vast feathery crown of dark +green velvet slept in the still sunlight. But wonders of wonders! from +among the branches hung great sea-green lilies, and, nestled in the heart +of each of them, the bust of a beautiful girl. Their white bosoms and +shoulders gleamed rosy-white against the emerald petals, like conch-shells +half-hidden among sea-weeds, while their delicate waists melted +mysteriously into the central sanctuary of the flower. Their long arms +and golden tresses waved languishingly downward in the breeze; their eyes +glittered like diamonds; their breaths perfumed the air. A blind ecstasy +seized me--I awoke again to humanity, and fiercely clasping the tree, +shook and tore at it, in the blind hope of bringing nearer to me the magic +beauties above: for I knew that I was in the famous land of Wak-Wak, from +which the Eastern merchants used to pluck those flower-born beauties, and +bring them home to fill the harems of the Indian kings. Suddenly I heard +a rustling in the thistles behind me, and looking round saw again that +dreaded face--my cousin! + +He was dressed--strange jumble that dreams are!--like an American +backwoodsman. He carried the same revolver and bowie-knife which he had +showed me the fatal night that he intruded on the Chartist club. I shook +with terror; but he, too, did not see me. He threw himself on his knees, +and began fiercely digging and scraping for the gold. + +The winged ants rushed on him, but he looked up, and "held them with his +glittering eye," and they shrank back abashed into the thistle covert; +while I strained and tugged on, and the faces of the dryads above grew +sadder and older, and their tears fell on me like a fragrant rain. + +Suddenly the tree-bole cracked--it was tottering. I looked round, and saw +that my cousin knelt directly in the path of its fall. I tried to call +to him to move; but how could a poor edentate like myself articulate a +word? I tried to catch his attention by signs--he would not see. I tried, +convulsively, to hold the tree up, but it was too late; a sudden gust of +air swept by, and down it rushed, with a roar like a whirlwind, and leaving +my cousin untouched, struck me full across the loins, broke my backbone, +and pinned me to the ground in mortal agony. I heard one wild shriek rise +from the flower fairies, as they fell each from the lily cup, no longer of +full human size, but withered, shrivelled, diminished a thousand-fold, and +lay on the bare sand, like little rosy humming-birds' eggs, all crushed and +dead. + +The great blue heaven above me spoke, and cried, "Selfish and sense-bound! +thou hast murdered beauty!" + +The sighing thistle-ocean answered, and murmured, "Discontented! thou hast +murdered beauty!" + +One flower fairy alone lifted up her tiny cheek from the gold-strewn sand, +and cried, "Presumptuous! thou hast murdered beauty!" + +It was Lillian's face--Lillian's voice! My cousin heard it too, and turned +eagerly; and as my eyes closed in the last death-shiver, I saw him coolly +pick up the little beautiful figure, which looked like a fragment of some +exquisite cameo, and deliberately put it away in his cigar-case, as he said +to himself, "A charming tit-bit for me, when I return from the diggings"! + + * * * * * + +When I awoke again, I was a baby-ape in Bornean forests, perched among +fragrant trailers and fantastic orchis flowers; and as I looked down, +beneath the green roof, into the clear waters paved with unknown +water-lilies on which the sun had never shone, I saw my face reflected +in the pool--a melancholy, thoughtful countenance, with large projecting +brow--it might have been a negro child's. And I felt stirring in me, germs +of a new and higher consciousness--yearnings of love towards the mother +ape, who fed me and carried me from tree to tree. But I grew and grew; and +then the weight of my destiny fell upon me. I saw year by year my brow +recede, my neck enlarge, my jaw protrude; my teeth became tusks; skinny +wattles grew from my cheeks--the animal faculties in me were swallowing +up the intellectual. I watched in myself, with stupid self-disgust, the +fearful degradation which goes on from youth to age in all the monkey +race, especially in those which approach nearest to the human form. Long +melancholy mopings, fruitless stragglings to think, were periodically +succeeded by wild frenzies, agonies of lust and aimless ferocity. I flew +upon my brother apes, and was driven off with wounds. I rushed howling down +into the village gardens, destroying everything I met. I caught the birds +and insects, and tore them to pieces with savage glee. One day, as I sat +among the boughs, I saw Lillian coming along a flowery path--decked as Eve +might have been, the day she turned from Paradise. The skins of gorgeous +birds were round her waist; her hair was wreathed with fragrant tropic +flowers. On her bosom lay a baby--it was my cousin's. I knew her, and +hated her. The madness came upon me. I longed to leap from the bough and +tear her limb from limb; but brutal terror, the dread of man which is the +doom of beasts, kept me rooted to my place. Then my cousin came--a hunter +missionary; and I heard him talk to her with pride of the new world of +civilization and Christianity which he was organizing in that tropic +wilderness. I listened with a dim jealous understanding--not of the words, +but of the facts. I saw them instinctively, as in a dream. She pointed up +to me in terror and disgust, as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead. He +threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly, and fired--I fell dead, but +conscious still. I knew that my carcase was carried to the settlement; and +I watched while a smirking, chuckling surgeon dissected me, bone by bone, +and nerve by nerve. And as he was fingering at my heart, and discoursing +sneeringly about Van Helmont's dreams of the Archaeus, and the animal +spirit which dwells within the solar plexus, Eleanor glided by again, like +an angel, and drew my soul out of the knot of nerves, with one velvet +finger-tip. + + * * * * * + +Child-dreams--more vague and fragmentary than my animal ones; and yet more +calm, and simple, and gradually, as they led me onward through a new life, +ripening into detail, coherence, and reflection. Dreams of a hut among +the valleys of Thibet--the young of forest animals, wild cats, and dogs, +and fowls, brought home to be my playmates, and grow up tame around me. +Snow-peaks which glittered white against the nightly sky, barring in the +horizon of the narrow valley, and yet seeming to beckon upwards, outwards. +Strange unspoken aspirations; instincts which pointed to unfulfilled +powers, a mighty destiny. A sense, awful and yet cheering, of a wonder +and a majesty, a presence and a voice around, in the cliffs and the pine +forests, and the great blue rainless heaven. The music of loving voices, +the sacred names of child and father, mother, brother, sister, first of all +inspirations.--Had we not an All-Father, whose eyes looked down upon us +from among those stars above; whose hand upheld the mountain roots below +us? Did He not love us, too, even as we loved each other? + + * * * * * + +The noise of wheels crushing slowly through meadows of tall marigolds and +asters, orchises and fragrant lilies. I lay, a child, upon a woman's bosom. +Was she my mother, or Eleanor, or Lillian? Or was she neither, and yet +all--some ideal of the great Arian tribe, containing in herself all future +types of European women? So I slept and woke, and slept again, day after +day, week after week, in the lazy bullock-waggon, among herds of grey +cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs; among shaggy white horses, +heavy-horned sheep, and silky goats; among tall, bare-limbed men, with +stone axes on their shoulders, and horn bows at their backs. Westward, +through the boundless steppes, whither or why we knew not; but that the +All-Father had sent us forth. And behind us the rosy snow-peaks died into +ghastly grey, lower and lower as every evening came; and before us the +plains spread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever fresh tribes +of gaudy flowers. Behind us dark lines of living beings streamed down +the mountain slopes; around us dark lines crawled along the plains--all +westward, westward ever.--The tribes of the Holy Mountain poured out like +water to replenish the earth and subdue it--lava-streams from the crater +of that great soul-volcano--Titan babies, dumb angels of God, bearing with +them in their unconscious pregnancy the law, the freedom, the science, the +poetry, the Christianity of Europe and the world. + +Westward ever--who could stand against us? We met the wild asses on the +steppe, and tamed them, and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, +and swam broad rivers on their skins. The Python snake lay across our +path; the wolves and the wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts; +we slew them and went on. The forest rose in black tangled barriers: we +hewed our way through them and went on. Strange giant tribes met us, and +eagle-visaged hordes, fierce and foolish; we smote them hip and thigh, and +went on, westward ever. Days and weeks and months rolled on, and our wheels +rolled on with them. New alps rose up before us; we climbed and climbed +them, till, in lonely glens, the mountain walls stood up, and barred our +path. + +Then one arose and said, "Rocks are strong, but the All-Father is stronger. +Let us pray to Him to send the earthquakes, and blast the mountains +asunder." + +So we sat down and prayed, but the earthquake did not come. + +Then another arose and said, "Rocks are strong, but the All-Father is +stronger. If we are the children of the All-Father, we, too, are stronger +than the rocks. Let us portion out the valley, to every man an equal plot +of ground; and bring out the sacred seeds, and sow, and build, and come up +with me and bore the mountain." + +And all said, "It is the voice of God. We will go up with thee, and bore +the mountain; and thou shalt be our king, for thou art wisest, and the +spirit of the All-Father is on thee; and whosoever will not go up with thee +shall die as a coward and an idler." + +So we went up; and in the morning we bored the mountain, and at night we +came down and tilled the ground, and sowed wheat and barley, and planted +orchards. And in the upper glens we met the mining dwarfs, and saw their +tools of iron and copper, and their rock-houses and forges, and envied +them. But they would give us none of them: then our king said-- + +"The All-Father has given all things and all wisdom. Woe to him who keeps +them to himself: we will teach you to sow the sacred seeds; and do you +teach us your smith-work or you die." + +Then the dwarf's taught us smith-work; and we loved them, for they were +wise; and they married our sons and daughters; and we went on boring the +mountain. + +Then some of us arose and said, "We are stronger than our brethren, and +can till more ground than they. Give us a greater portion of land, to each +according to his power." + +But the king said, "Wherefore? that ye may eat and drink more than your +brethren? Have you larger stomachs, as well as stronger arms? As much as +a man needs for himself, that he may do for himself. The rest is the gift +of the All-Father, and we must do His work therewith. For the sake of the +women and the children, for the sake of the sick and the aged, let him that +is stronger go up and work the harder at the mountain." And all men said, +"It is well spoken." + +So we were all equal--for none took more than he needed; and we were all +free, because we loved to obey the king by whom the spirit spoke; and +we were all brothers, because we had one work, and one hope, and one +All-Father. + +But I grew up to be a man; and twenty years were past, and the mountain +was not bored through; and the king grew old, and men began to love their +flocks and herds better than quarrying, and they gave up boring through the +mountain. And the strong and the cunning said, "What can we do with all +this might of ours?" So, because they had no other way of employing it, +they turned it against each other, and swallowed up the heritage of the +weak: and a few grew rich, and many poor; and the valley was filled with +sorrow, for the land became too narrow for them. + +Then I arose and said, "How is this?" And they said, "We must make +provision for our children." + +And I answered, "The All-Father meant neither you nor your children to +devour your brethren. Why do you not break up more waste ground? Why do you +not try to grow more corn in your fields?" + +And they answered, "We till the ground as our forefathers did: we will keep +to the old traditions." + +And I answered, "Oh ye hypocrites! have ye not forgotten the old +traditions, that each man should have his equal share of ground, and that +we should go on working at the mountain, for the sake of the weak and the +children, the fatherless and the widow?" + +And they answered nought for a while. + +Then one said, "Are we not better off as we are? We buy the poor man's +ground for a price, and we pay him his wages for tilling it for us--and we +know better how to manage it than he." + +And I said, "Oh ye hypocrites! See how your lie works! Those who were free +are now slaves. Those who had peace of mind are now anxious from day to day +for their daily bread. And the multitude gets poorer and poorer, while ye +grow fatter and fatter. If ye had gone on boring the mountain, ye would +have had no time to eat up your brethren." + +Then they laughed and said, "Thou art a singer of songs, and a dreamer of +dreams. Let those who want to get through the mountain go up and bore it; +we are well enough here. Come now, sing us pleasant songs, and talk no more +foolish dreams, and we will reward thee." + +Then they brought out a veiled maiden, and said, "Look! her feet are like +ivory, and her hair like threads of gold; and she is the sweetest singer +in the whole valley. And she shall be thine, if thou wilt be like other +people, and prophesy smooth things unto us, and torment us no more with +talk about liberty, equality, and brotherhood; for they never were, and +never will be, on this earth. Living is too hard work to give in to such +fancies." + +And when the maiden's veil was lifted, it was Lillian. And she clasped me +round the neck, and cried, "Come! I will be your bride, and you shall be +rich and powerful; and all men shall speak well of you, and you shall write +songs; and we will sing them together, and feast and play from dawn to +dawn." + +And I wept; and turned me about, and cried, "Wife and child, song and +wealth, are pleasant; but blessed is the work which the All-Father has +given the people to do. Let the maimed and the halt and the blind, the +needy and the fatherless, come up after me, and we will bore the mountain." + +But the rich drove me out, and drove back those who would have followed me. +So I went up by myself, and bored the mountain seven years, weeping; and +every year Lillian came to me, and said, "Come, and be my husband, for +my beauty is fading, and youth passes fast away." But I set my heart +steadfastly to the work. + +And when seven years were over, the poor were so multiplied, that the rich +had not wherewith to pay their labour. And there came a famine in the land, +and many of the poor died. Then the rich said, "If we let these men starve, +they will turn on us, and kill us, for hunger has no conscience, and they +are all but like the beasts that perish." So they all brought, one a +bullock, another a sack of meal, each according to his substance, and fed +the poor therewith; and said to them, "Behold our love and mercy towards +you!" But the more they gave, the less they had wherewithal to pay their +labourers; and the more they gave, the less the poor liked to work; so that +at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the ground, and each +man had to go and till his own, and knew not how; so the land lay waste, +and there was great perplexity. + +Then I went down to them and said, "If you had hearkened to me, and not +robbed your brethren of their land, you would never have come into this +strait; for by this time the mountain would have been bored through." + +Then they cursed the mountain, and me, and Him who made them, and came down +to my cottage at night, and cried, "One-sided and left-handed! father of +confusion, and disciple of dead donkeys, see to what thou hast brought the +land, with thy blasphemous doctrines! Here we are starving, and not only +we, but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable notions!" + +"You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor," said I, "since you found +that they would not starve that you might wanton." + +Then once more Lillian came to me, thin and pale, and worn. "See, I, too, +am starving! and you have been the cause of it; but I will forgive all if +you will help us but this once." + +"How shall I help you?" + +"You are a poet and an orator, and win over all hearts with your talk and +your songs. Go down to the tribes of the plain, and persuade them to send +us up warriors, that we may put down these riotous and idle wretches; and +you shall be king of all the land, and I will be your slave, by day and +night." + +But I went out, and quarried steadfastly at the mountain. + +And when I came back the next evening, the poor had risen against the rich, +one and all, crying, "As you have done to us, so will we do to you;" and +they hunted them down like wild beasts, and slew many of them, and threw +their carcases on the dunghill, and took possession of their land and +houses, and cried, "We will be all free and equal as our forefathers were, +and live here, and eat and drink, and take our pleasure." + +Then I ran out, and cried to them, "Fools I will you do as these rich did, +and neglect the work of God? If you do to them as they have done to you, +you will sin as they sinned, and devour each other at the last, as they +devoured you. The old paths are best. Let each man, rich or poor, have his +equal share of the land, as it was at first, and go up and dig through the +mountain, and possess the good land beyond, where no man need jostle his +neighbour, or rob him, when the land becomes too small for you. Were the +rich only in fault? Did not you, too, neglect the work which the All-Father +had given you, and run every man after his own comfort? So you entered into +a lie, and by your own sin raised up the rich man to be your punishment. +For the last time, who will go up with me to the mountain?" + +Then they all cried with one voice, "We have sinned! We will go up and +pierce the mountain, and fulfil the work which God set to our forefathers." + +We went up, and the first stroke that I struck a crag fell out; and behold, +the light of day! and far below us the good land and large, stretching away +boundless towards the western sun. + + * * * * * + +I sat by the cave's mouth at the dawning of the day. Past me the tribe +poured down, young and old, with their waggons, and their cattle, their +seeds, and their arms, as of old--yet not as of old--wiser and stronger, +taught by long labour and sore affliction. Downward they streamed from +the cave's mouth into the glens, following the guidance of the silver +water-courses; and as they passed me, each kissed my hands and feet, and +cried, "Thou hast saved us--thou hast given up all for us. Come and be our +king!" + +"Nay," I said, "I have been your king this many a year; for I have been the +servant of you all." + +I went down with them into the plain, and called them round me. Many times +they besought me to go with them and lead them. + +"No," I said, "I am old and grey-headed, and I am not as I have been. +Choose out the wisest and most righteous among you, and let him lead you. +But bind him to yourselves with an oath, that whenever he shall say to you, +'Stay here, and let us sit down and build, and dwell here for ever,' you +shall cast him out of his office, and make him a hewer of wood and a drawer +of water, and choose one who will lead you forwards in the spirit of God." + +The crowd opened, and a woman came forward into the circle. Her face was +veiled, but we all knew her for a prophetess. Slowly she stepped into +the midst, chanting a mystic song. Whether it spoke of past, present, or +future, we knew not; but it sank deep into all our hearts. + + "True freedom stands in meekness-- + True strength in utter weakness-- + Justice in forgiveness lies-- + Riches in self-sacrifice-- + Own no rank but God's own spirit-- + Wisdom rule!--and worth inherit! + Work for all, and all employ-- + Share with all, and all enjoy-- + God alike to all has given, + Heaven as Earth, and Earth as Heaven, + When the laud shall find her king again, + And the reign of God is come." + +We all listened, awe-struck. She turned to us and continued: + +"Hearken to me, children of Japhet, the unresting! + +"On the holy mountain of Paradise, in the Asgard of the Hindoo-Koh, in +the cup of the four rivers, in the womb of the mother of nations, in +brotherhood, equality, and freedom, the sons of men were begotten, at the +wedding of the heaven and the earth. Mighty infants, you did the right +you knew not of, and sinned not, because there was no temptation. By +selfishness you fell, and became beasts of prey. Each man coveted the +universe for his own lusts, and not that he might fulfil in it God's +command to people and subdue it. Long have you wandered--and long will you +wander still. For here you have no abiding city. You shall build cities, +and they shall crumble; you shall invent forms of society and religion, and +they shall fail in the hour of need. You shall call the lands by your own +names, and fresh waves of men shall sweep you forth, westward, westward +ever, till you have travelled round the path of the sun, to the place from +whence you came. For out of Paradise you went, and unto Paradise you shall +return; you shall become once more as little children, and renew your youth +like the eagle's. Feature by feature, and limb by limb, ye shall renew +it; age after age, gradually and painfully, by hunger and pestilence, by +superstitions and tyrannies, by need and blank despair, shall you be driven +back to the All-Father's home, till you become as you were before you fell, +and left the likeness of your father for the likeness of the beasts. Out of +Paradise you came, from liberty, equality, and brotherhood, and unto them +you shall return again. You went forth in unconscious infancy--you shall +return in thoughtful manhood.--You went forth in ignorance and need--you +shall return in science and wealth, philosophy and art. You went forth with +the world a wilderness before you--you shall return when it is a garden +behind you. You went forth selfish-savages--you shall return as the +brothers of the Son of God. + +"And for you," she said, looking on me, "your penance is accomplished. You +have learned what it is to be a man. You have lost your life and saved it. +He that gives up house, or land, or wife, or child, for God's sake, it +shall be repaid him an hundred-fold. Awake!" + +Surely I knew that voice. She lifted her veil. The face was Lillian's? +No!--Eleanor's! + +Gently she touched my hand--I sank down into soft, weary happy sleep. + +The spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I +woke to the twittering of the sparrows, and the scent of the poplar leaves, +and the sights and sounds of childhood, and found Eleanor and her uncle +sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife. + +I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking +her uncle's arm, glided from the room. Katie kept stubbornly a smiling +silence, and I was fain to obey my new-found guardian angels. + +What need of many words? Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, +I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate +of birth into another life. The fury of passion had been replaced by a +delicious weakness. The thunder-clouds had passed roaring down the wind, +and the calm bright holy evening was come. My heart, like a fretful child, +had stamped and wept itself to sleep. I was past even gratitude; infinite +submission and humility, feelings too long forgotten, absorbed my whole +being. Only I never dared meet Eleanor's eye. Her voice was like an angel's +when she spoke to me--friend, mother, sister, all in one. But I had a dim +recollection of being unjust to her--of some bar between us. + +Katie and Crossthwaite, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both, +told me, in time, that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. I could not thank +her--the debt was infinite, inexplicable. I felt as if I must speak all my +heart or none; and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of sleepy, +passive wonder, like a new-born babe. + +At last, one day, my kind nurses allowed me to speak a little. I broached +to Crossthwaite the subject which filled my thoughts. "How came I here? How +came you here? and Lady Ellerton? What is the meaning of it all?" + +"The meaning is, that Lady Ellerton, as they call her, is an angel out of +heaven. Ah, Alton! she was your true friend, after all, if you had but +known it, and not that other one at all." + +I turned my head away. + +"Whisht--howld then, Johnny darlint! and don't go tormenting the poor dear +sowl, just when he's comin' round again." + +"No, no! tell me all. I must--I ought--I deserve to bear it. How did she +come here?" + +"Why then, it's my belief, she had her eye on you ever since you came out +of that Bastille, and before that, too; and she found you out at Mackaye's, +and me with you, for I was there looking after you. If it hadn't been for +your illness, I'd have been in Texas now, with our friends, for all's up +with the Charter, and the country's too hot, at least for me. I'm sick of +the whole thing together, patriots, aristocrats, and everybody else, except +this blessed angel. And I've got a couple of hundred to emigrate with; and +what's more, so have you." + +"How's that?" + +"Why, when poor dear old Mackaye's will was read, and you raving mad in the +next room, he had left all his stock-in-trade, that was, the books, to some +of our friends, to form a workmen's library with, and L400 he'd saved, to +be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd G.T.T., and cool down +across the Atlantic, for seven years come the tenth of April." + +So, then, by the lasting love of my adopted father, I was at present at +least out of the reach of want! My heart was ready to overflow at my eyes; +but I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton. What brought +her here, to nurse me as if she had been a sister? + +"Why, then, she lives not far off by. When her husband died, his cousin got +the estate and title, and so she came, Katie tells me, and lived for one +year down somewhere in the East-end among the needlewomen; and spent her +whole fortune on the poor, and never kept a servant, so they say, but made +her own bed and cooked her own dinner, and got her bread with her own +needle, to see what it was really like. And she learnt a lesson there, I +can tell you, and God bless her for it. For now she's got a large house +here by, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the +earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits +which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for +them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them +while they work, and teaches them every day." + +"And takes her victuals with them," said Katie, "share and share alike. She +that was so grand a lady, to demane herself to the poor unfortunate young +things! She's as blessed a saint as any a one in the Calendar, if they'll +forgive me for saying so." + +"Ay! demeaning, indeed! for the best of it is, they're not the respectable +ones only, though she spends hundreds on them--" + +"And sure, haven't I seen it with my own eyes, when I've been there +charing?" + +"Ay, but those she lives with are the fallen and the lost ones--those that +the rich would not set up in business, or help them to emigrate, or lift +them out of the gutter with a pair of tongs, for fear they should stain +their own whitewash in handling them." + +"And sure they're as dacent as meself now, the poor darlints! It was misery +druv 'em to it, every one; perhaps it might hav' druv me the same way, if +I'd a lot o' childer, and Johnny gone to glory--and the blessed saints save +him from that same at all at all!" + +"What! from going to glory?" said John. + +"Och, thin, and wouldn't I just go mad if ever such ill luck happened to +yees as to be taken to heaven in the prime of your days, asthore?" + +And she began sobbing and hugging and kissing the little man; and then +suddenly recollecting herself, scolded him heartily for making such a +"whillybaloo," and thrust him out of my room, to recommence kissing him in +the next, leaving me to many meditations. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE. + + +I used to try to arrange my thoughts, but could not; the past seemed +swept away and buried, like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood. +Ploughed by affliction to the core, my heart lay fallow for every seed that +fell. Eleanor understood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skilful +hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite +used to sit and read to me--from the Bible, from poets, from every book +which could suggest soothing, graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now out of the +stillness of the darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of a +Kempis, or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear: and then +there was silence again; and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy, +till they became a fibre of my own soul's core. Again and again the stories +of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Milton's Penseroso, or with +Wordsworth's tenderest and most solemn strains. Exquisite prints from the +history of our Lord's life and death were hung one by one, each for a +few days, opposite my bed, where they might catch my eye the moment that +I woke, the moment before I fell asleep. I heard one day the good dean +remonstrating with her on the "sentimentalism" of her mode of treatment. + +"Poor drowned butterfly!" she answered, smiling, "he must be fed with +honey-dew. Have I not surely had practice enough already?" + +"Yes, angel that you are!" answered the old man. "You have indeed had +practice enough!" And lifting her hand reverentially to his lips, he turned +and left the room. + +She sat down by me as I lay, and began to read from Tennyson's +Lotus-Eaters. But it was not reading--it was rather a soft dreamy chant, +which rose and fell like the waves of sound on an AEolian harp. + + "There is sweet music here that softer falls + Than petals from blown roses on the grass, + Or night dews on still waters between wails + Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; + Music that gentler on the spirit lies + Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; + Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. + Here are cool mosses deep, + And through the moss the ivies creep, + And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, + And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. + + "Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, + And utterly consumed with sharp distress, + While all things else have rest from weariness? + All things have rest: why should we toil alone? + We only toil, who are the first of things, + And make perpetual moan, + Still from one sorrow to another thrown: + Nor ever fold our wings. + And cease from wanderings; + Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm, + Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, + 'There is no joy but calm!' + Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?" + +She paused-- + + My soul was an enchanted boat + Which, like a sleeping swan, did float + Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing. + +Half-unconscious, I looked up. Before me hung a copy of Raffaelle's cartoon +of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. As my eye wandered over it, it seemed +to blend into harmony with the feelings which the poem had stirred. I +seemed to float upon the glassy lake. I watched the vista of the waters +and mountains, receding into the dreamy infinite of the still summer sky. +Softly from distant shores came the hum of eager multitudes; towers and +palaces slept quietly beneath the eastern sun. In front, fantastic fishes, +and the birds of the mountain and the lake, confessed His power, who sat +there in His calm godlike beauty, His eye ranging over all that still +infinity of His own works, over all that wondrous line of figures, which +seemed to express every gradation of spiritual consciousness, from the +dark self-condemned dislike of Judas's averted and wily face, through mere +animal greediness to the first dawnings of surprise, and on to the manly +awe and gratitude of Andrew's majestic figure, and the self-abhorrent +humility of Peter, as he shrank down into the bottom of the skiff, and with +convulsive palms and bursting brow seemed to press out from his inmost +heart the words, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" Truly, +pictures are the books of the unlearned, and of the mis-learned too. +Glorious Raffaelle! Shakspeare of the South! Mighty preacher, to whose +blessed intuition it was given to know all human hearts, to embody in form +and colour all spiritual truths, common alike to Protestant and Papist, to +workman and to sage--oh that I may meet thee before the throne of God, if +it be but to thank thee for that one picture, in which thou didst reveal to +me, in a single glance, every step of my own spiritual history! + +She seemed to follow my eyes, and guess from them the workings of my heart; +for now, in a low, half-abstracted voice, as Diotima may have talked of +old, she began to speak of rest and labour, of death and life; of a labour +which is perfect rest--of a daily death, which is but daily birth--of +weakness, which is the strength of God; and so she wandered on in her +speech to Him who died for us. And gradually she turned to me. She laid one +finger solemnly on my listless palm, as her words and voice became more +intense, more personal. She talked of Him, as Mary may have talked just +risen from His feet. She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken +of before--with a tender passionate loyalty, kept down and softened by +the deepest awe. The sense of her intense belief, shining out in every +lineament of her face, carried conviction to my heart more than ten +thousand arguments could do. It must be true!--Was not the power of it +around her like a glory? She spoke of Him as near us--watching us--in +words of such vivid eloquence that I turned half-startled to her, as if I +expected to see Him standing by her side. + +She spoke of Him as the great Reformer; and yet as the true conservative; +the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in His Bible to every age abysses +of new wisdom, as the times require; and yet the vindicator of all which +is ancient and eternal--the justifier of His own dealings with man from +the beginning. She spoke of Him as the true demagogue--the champion of the +poor; and yet as the true King, above and below all earthly rank; on whose +will alone all real superiority of man to man, all the time-justified and +time-honoured usages of the family, the society, the nation, stand and +shall stand for ever. + + * * * * * + +And then she changed her tone; and in a voice of infinite tenderness she +spoke of Him as the Creator, the Word, the Inspirer, the only perfect +Artist, the Fountain of all Genius. + +She made me feel--would that His ministers had made me feel it before, +since they say that they believe it--that He had passed victorious through +my vilest temptations, that He sympathized with my every struggle. + +She told me how He, in the first dawn of manhood, full of the dim +consciousness of His own power, full of strange yearning presentiments +about His own sad and glorious destiny, went up into the wilderness, as +every youth, above all every genius, must, there to be tempted of the +devil. She told how alone with the wild beasts, and the brute powers of +nature, He saw into the open secret--the mystery of man's twofold life, His +kingship over earth, His sonship under God: and conquered in the might of +His knowledge. How He was tempted, like every genius, to use His creative +powers for selfish ends--to yield to the lust of display and singularity, +and break through those laws which He came to reveal and to fulfil--to do +one little act of evil, that He might secure thereby the harvest of good +which was the object of His life: and how He had conquered in the faith +that He was the Son of God. She told me how He had borne the sorrows of +genius; how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint +pattern of His; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny, +misconception, misinterpretation; how He had fought with bigotry and +stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, knowing full well what it was +to speak to the deaf and the blind; how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the +bitterness of disappointed patriotism, when He had tried in vain to awaken +within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots the consciousness of +their glorious calling.... + +It was too much--I hid my face in the coverlet, and burst out into long, +low, and yet most happy weeping. She rose and went to the window, and +beckoned Katie from the room within. + +"I am afraid," she said, "my conversation has been too much for him." + +"Showers sweeten the air," said Katie; and truly enough, as my own +lightened brain told me. + +Eleanor--for so I must call her now--stood watching me for a few minutes, +and then glided back to the bedside, and sat down again. + +"You find the room quiet?" + +"Wonderfully quiet. The roar of the city outside is almost soothing, and +the noise of every carriage seems to cease suddenly just as it becomes +painfully near." + +"We have had straw laid down," she answered, "all along this part of the +street." + +This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing: a veil fell from +before my eyes--it was she who had been my friend, my guardian angel, from +the beginning! + +"You--you--idiot that I have been! I see it all now. It was you who laid +that paper to catch my eye on that first evening at D * * *!--you paid my +debt to my cousin!--you visited Mackaye in his last illness!" + +She made a sign of assent. + +"You saw from the beginning my danger, my weakness!--you tried to turn +me from my frantic and fruitless passion!--you tried to save me from +the very gulf into which I forced myself!--and I--I have hated you in +return--cherished suspicions too ridiculous to confess, only equalled by +the absurdity of that other dream!" + +"Would that other dream have ever given you peace, even if it had ever +become reality?" + +She spoke gently, slowly, seriously; waiting between each question for the +answer which I dared not give. + +"What was it that you adored? a soul or a face? The inward reality or the +outward symbol, which is only valuable as a sacrament of the loveliness +within?" + +"Ay!" thought I, "and was that loveliness within? What was that beauty but +a hollow mask?" How barren, borrowed, trivial, every thought and word of +hers seemed now, as I looked back upon them, in comparison with the rich +luxuriance, the startling originality, of thought, and deed, and sympathy, +in her who now sat by me, wan and faded, beautiful no more as men call +beauty, but with the spirit of an archangel gazing from those clear, fiery +eyes! And as I looked at her, an emotion utterly new to me arose; utter +trust, delight, submission, gratitude, awe--if it was love, it was love as +of a dog towards his master.... + +"Ay," I murmured, half unconscious that I spoke aloud, "her I loved, and +love no longer; but you, you I worship, and for ever!" + +"Worship God," she answered. "If it shall please you hereafter to call +me friend, I shall refuse neither the name nor its duties. But remember +always, that whatsoever interest I feel in you, and, indeed, have felt from +the first time I saw your poems, I cannot give or accept friendship upon +any ground so shallow and changeable as personal preference. The time was +when I thought it a mark of superior intellect and refinement to be as +exclusive in my friendships as in my theories. Now I have learnt that that +is most spiritual and noble which is also most universal. If we are to call +each other friends, it must be for a reason which equally includes the +outcast and the profligate, the felon, and the slave." + +"What do you mean?" I asked, half disappointed. + +"Only for the sake of Him who died for all alike." + +Why did she rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room where he was +writing? Was it from the womanly tact and delicacy which feared lest my +excited feelings might lead me on to some too daring expression, and give +me the pain of a rebuff, however gentle; or was it that she wished him, as +well as me, to hear the memorable words which followed, to which she seemed +to have been all along alluring me, and calling up in my mind, one by one, +the very questions to which she had prepared the answers? + +"That name!" I answered. "Alas! has it not been in every age the watchword, +not of an all-embracing charity, but of self-conceit and bigotry, +excommunication and persecution?" + +"That is what men have made it; not God, or He who bears it, the Son +of God. Yes, men have separated from each other, slandered each other, +murdered each other in that name, and blasphemed it by that very act. But +when did they unite in any name but that? Look all history through--from +the early churches, unconscious and infantile ideas of God's kingdom, +as Eden was of the human race, when love alone was law, and none said +that aught that he possessed was his own, but they had all things in +common--Whose name was the, bond of unity for that brotherhood, such as +the earth had never seen--when the Roman lady and the Negro slave partook +together at the table of the same bread and wine, and sat together at the +feet of the Syrian tent-maker?--'One is our Master, even Christ, who sits +at the right hand of God, and in Him we are all brothers.' Not self-chosen +preference for His precepts, but the overwhelming faith in His presence, +His rule, His love, bound those rich hearts together. Look onward, too, +at the first followers of St. Bennet and St. Francis, at the Cameronians +among their Scottish hills, or the little persecuted flock who in a dark +and godless time gathered around Wesley by pit mouths and on Cornish +cliffs--Look, too, at the great societies of our own days, which, however +imperfectly, still lovingly and earnestly do their measure of God's work +at home and abroad; and say, when was there ever real union, co-operation, +philanthropy, equality, brotherhood, among men, save in loyalty to +Him--Jesus, who died upon the cross?" + +And she bowed her head reverently before that unseen Majesty; and then +looked up at us again--Those eyes, now brimming full of earnest tears, +would have melted stonier hearts than ours that day. + +"Do you not believe me? Then I must quote against you one of your own +prophets--a ruined angel--even as you might have been. + +"When Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary, about to die, as is the fate +of such, by the hands of revolutionaries, was asked his age, he answered, +they say, that it was the same as that of the 'bon sans-culotte Jesus.' +I do not blame those who shrink from that speech as blasphemous. I, too, +have spoken hasty words and hard, and prided myself on breaking the bruised +reed, and quenching the smoking flax. Time was when I should have been the +loudest in denouncing poor Camille; but I have long since seemed to see +in those words the distortion of an almighty truth--a truth that shall +shake thrones, and principalities, and powers, and fill the earth with its +sound, as with the trump of God; a prophecy like Balaam's of old--'I shall +see Him, but not nigh; I shall behold Him, but not near.'... Take all +the heroes, prophets, poets, philosophers--where will you find the true +demagogue--the speaker to man simply as man--the friend of publicans and +sinners, the stern foe of the scribe and the Pharisee--with whom was no +respect of persons--where is he? Socrates and Plato were noble; Zerdusht +and Confutzee, for aught we know, were nobler still; but what were they but +the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened few, like our own Emersons and +Strausses, to compare great with small? What gospel have they, or Strauss, +or Emerson, for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed? The People's +Friend? Where will you find him, but in Jesus of Nazareth?" + +"We feel that; I assure you, we feel that," said Crossthwaite. "There are +thousands of us who delight in His moral teaching, as the perfection of +human excellence." + +"And what gospel is there in a moral teaching? What good news is it to the +savage of St. Giles, to the artizan, crushed by the competition of others +and his own evil habits, to tell him that he can be free--if he can make +himself free?--That all men are his equals--if he can rise to their level, +or pull them down to his?--All men his brothers--if he can only stop them +from devouring him, or making it necessary for him to devour them? Liberty, +equality, and brotherhood? Let the history of every nation, of every +revolution--let your own sad experience speak--have they been aught as yet +but delusive phantoms--angels that turned to fiends the moment you seemed +about to clasp them? Remember the tenth of April, and the plots thereof, +and answer your own hearts!" + +Crossthwaite buried his face in his hands. + +"What!" I answered, passionately, "will you rob us poor creatures of our +only faith, our only hope on earth? Let us be deceived, and deceived again, +yet we will believe! We will hope on in spite of hope. We may die, but the +idea lives for ever. Liberty, equality, and fraternity must come. We know, +we know, that they must come; and woe to those who seek to rob us of our +faith!" + +"Keep, keep your faith," she cried; "for it is not yours, but God's, who +gave it! But do not seek to realize that idea for yourselves." + +"Why, then, in the name of reason and mercy?" + +"Because it is realized already for you. You are free; God has made you +free. You are equals--you are brothers; for He is your king who is no +respecter of persons. He is your king, who has bought for you the rights +of sons of God. He is your king, to whom all power is given in heaven and +earth; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies under His +feet. That was Luther's charter,--with that alone he freed half Europe. +That is your charter, and mine; the everlasting ground of our rights, +our mights, our duties, of ever-gathering storm for the oppressor, +of ever-brightening sunshine for the oppressed. Own no other. Claim +your investiture as free men from none but God. His will, His love, +is a stronger ground, surely, than abstract rights and ethnological +opinions. Abstract rights? What ground, what root have they, but the +ever-changing opinions of men, born anew and dying anew with each fresh +generation?--while the word of God stands sure--'You are mine, and I am +yours, bound to you in an everlasting covenant.' + +"Abstract rights? They are sure to end, in practice, only in the tyranny of +their father--opinion. In favoured England here, the notions of abstract +right among the many are not so incorrect, thanks to three centuries of +Protestant civilization; but only because the right notions suit the many +at this moment. But in America, even now, the same ideas of abstract right +do not interfere with the tyranny of the white man over the black. Why +should they? The white man is handsomer, stronger, cunninger, worthier than +the black. The black is more like an ape than the white man--he is--the +fact is there; and no notions of an abstract right will put that down: +nothing but another fact--a mightier, more universal fact--Jesus of +Nazareth died for the negro as well as for the white. Looked at apart from +Him, each race, each individual of mankind, stands separate and alone, +owing no more brotherhood to each other than wolf to wolf, or pike to +pike--himself a mightier beast of prey--even as he has proved himself in +every age. Looked at as he is, as joined into one family in Christ, his +archetype and head, even the most frantic declamations of the French +democrat, about the majesty of the people, the divinity of mankind, +become rational, reverent, and literal. God's grace outrivals all man's +boasting--'I have said, ye are gods, and ye are all the children of the +Most Highest:'--'children of God, members of Christ, of His body, of His +flesh, and of His bones,'--'kings and priests to God,'--free inheritors of +the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of prudence and courage, +of reverence and love, the spirit of Him who has said, 'Behold, the days +come, when I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and no one shall teach +his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Him, from the least +even unto the greatest. Ay, even on the slaves and on the handmaidens in +those days will I pour out my spirit, saith the Lord!'" + +"And that is really in the Bible?" asked Crossthwaite. + +"Ay"--she went on, her figure dilating, and her eyes flashing, like an +inspired prophetess--"that is in the Bible! What would you more than that? +That is your charter; the only ground of all charters. You, like all +mankind, have had dim inspirations, confused yearnings after your future +destiny, and, like all the world from the beginning, you have tried to +realize, by self-willed methods of your own, what you can only do by God's +inspiration, by God's method. Like the builders of Babel in old time, you +have said, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top shall +reach to heaven'--And God has confounded you as he did them. By mistrust, +division, passion, and folly, you are scattered abroad. Even in these last +few days, the last dregs of your late plot have exploded miserably and +ludicrously--your late companions are in prison, and the name of Chartist +is a laughing-stock as well as an abomination." + +"Good Heavens! Is this true?" asked I, looking at Crossthwaite for +confirmation. + +"Too true, dear boy, too true: and if it had not been for these two angels +here, I should have been in Newgate now!" + +"Yes," she went on. "The Charter seems dead, and liberty further off than +ever." + +"That seems true enough, indeed," said I, bitterly. + +"Yes. But it is because Liberty is God's beloved child, that He will not +have her purity sullied by the touch of the profane. Because He loves the +people, He will allow none but Himself to lead the people. Because He loves +the people, He will teach the people by afflictions. And even now, while +all this madness has been destroying itself, He has been hiding you in His +secret place from the strife of tongues, that you may have to look for a +state founded on better things than acts of parliament, social contracts, +and abstract rights--a city whose foundations are in the eternal promises, +whose builder and maker is God." + +She paused.--"Go on, go on," cried Crossthwaite and I in the same breath. + +"That state, that city, Jesus said, was come--was now within us, had we +eyes to see. And it is come. Call it the church, the gospel, civilization, +freedom, democracy, association, what you will--I shall call it by the name +by which my Master spoke of it--the name which includes all these, and more +than these--the kingdom of God. 'Without observation,' as he promised, +secretly, but mightily, it has been growing, spreading, since that first +Whitsuntide; civilizing, humanizing, uniting this distracted earth. Men +have fancied they found it in this system or in that, and in them only. +They have cursed it in its own name, when they found it too wide for their +own narrow notions. They have cried, 'Lo here!' and 'Lo there!' 'To this +communion!' or 'To that set of opinions.' But it has gone its way--the way +of Him who made all things, and redeemed all things to Himself. In every +age it has been a gospel to the poor, In every age it has, sooner or later, +claimed the steps of civilization, the discoveries of science, as God's +inspirations, not man's inventions. In every age, it has taught men to do +that by God which they had failed in doing without Him. It is now ready, +if we may judge by the signs of the times, once again to penetrate, to +convert, to reorganize, the political and social life of England, perhaps +of the world; to vindicate democracy as the will and gift of God. Take +it for the ground of your rights. If, henceforth, you claim political +enfranchisement, claim it not as mere men, who may be villains, savages, +animals, slaves of their own prejudices and passions; but as members of +Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore +bound to realize it on earth. All other rights are mere mights--mere +selfish demands to become tyrants in your turn. If you wish to justify your +Charter, do it on that ground. Claim your share in national life, only +because the nation is a spiritual body, whose king is the Son of God; whose +work, whose national character and powers, are allotted to it by the Spirit +of Christ. Claim universal suffrage, only on the ground of the universal +redemption of mankind--the universal priesthood of Christians. That +argument will conquer, when all have failed; for God will make it conquer. +Claim the disenfranchisement of every man, rich or poor, who breaks +the laws of God and man, not merely because he is an obstacle to you, +but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven, and to the +spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen. Denounce the effete idol +of property-qualification, not because it happens to strengthen class +interests against you, but because, as your mystic dream reminded you, and, +therefore, as you knew long ago, there is no real rank, no real power, but +worth; and worth consists not in property, but in the grace of God. Claim, +if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing the responsibility +of rulers to the Christian community, of which they are to be, not the +lords, but the ministers--the servants of all. But claim these, and all +else for which you long, not from man, but from God, the King of men. And +therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves worthy of +them--perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less +needful. At all events, do not ask, do not hope, that He will give them to +you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them +from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings. +Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last +half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for +those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that +those who had them were equally unfit; but thank God, if the case be indeed +so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to make confusion worse +confounded! Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in Christ, and +become new creatures. With those miserable, awful farce tragedies of April +and June, let old things pass away, and all things become new. Believe +that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One whose servants must not +fight. He that believeth, as the prophet says, will not make haste. Beloved +suffering brothers! are not your times in the hand of One who loved you to +the death, who conquered, as you must do, not by wrath, but by martyrdom? +Try no more to meet Mammon with his own weapons, but commit your cause to +Him who judges righteously, who is even now coming out of His place to +judge the earth, and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that +the man of the world may be no more exalted against them--the poor man of +Nazareth, crucified for you!" + +She ceased, and there was silence for a few moments, as if angels were +waiting, hushed, to carry our repentance to the throne of Him we had +forgotten. + +Crossthwaite had kept his face fast buried in his hands; now he looked up +with brimming eyes-- + +"I see it--I see it all now. Oh, my God! my God! what infidels we have +been!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +MIRACLES AND SCIENCE. + + +Sunrise, they say, often at first draws up and deepens the very mists +which it is about to scatter: and even so, as the excitement of my first +conviction cooled, dark doubts arose to dim the new-born light of hope and +trust within me. The question of miracles had been ever since I had read +Strauss my greatest stumbling-block--perhaps not unwillingly, for my doubts +pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scientific knowledge; and +"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." But now that they interfered +with nobler, more important, more immediately practical ideas, I longed +to have them removed--I longed even to swallow them down on trust--to +take the miracles "into the bargain" as it were, for the sake of that +mighty gospel of deliverance for the people which accompanied them. Mean +subterfuge! which would not, could not, satisfy me. The thing was too +precious, too all-important, to take one tittle of it on trust. I could +not bear the consciousness of one hollow spot--the nether fires of doubt +glaring through, even at one little crevice. I took my doubts to Lady +Ellerton--Eleanor, as I must now call her, for she never allowed herself +to be addressed by her title--and she referred me to her uncle-- + +"I could say somewhat on that point myself. But since your doubts are +scientific ones, I had rather that you should discuss them with one whose +knowledge of such subjects you, and all England with you, must revere." + +"Ah, but--pardon me; he is a clergyman." + +"And therefore bound to prove, whether he believes in his own proof or not. +Unworthy suspicion!" she cried, with a touch of her old manner. "If you had +known that man's literary history for the last thirty years, you would not +suspect him, at least, of sacrificing truth and conscience to interest, or +to fear of the world's insults." + +I was rebuked; and not without hope and confidence, I broached the question +to the good dean when he came in--as he happened to do that very day. + +"I hardly like to state my difficulties," I began--"for I am afraid that I +must hurt myself in your eyes by offending your--prejudices, if you will +pardon so plain-spoken an expression." + +"If," he replied, in his bland courtly way, "I am so unfortunate as to have +any prejudices left, you cannot do me a greater kindness than by offending +them--or by any other means, however severe--to make me conscious of the +locality of such a secret canker." + +"But I am afraid that your own teaching has created, or at least +corroborated, these doubts of mine." + +"How so?" + +"You first taught me to revere science. You first taught me to admire and +trust the immutable order, the perfect harmony of the laws of Nature." + +"Ah! I comprehend now!" he answered, in a somewhat mournful tone--"How much +we have to answer for! How often, in our carelessness, we offend those +little ones, whose souls are precious in the sight of God! I have thought +long and earnestly on the very subject which now distresses you; perhaps +every doubt which has passed through your mind, has exercised my own; +and, strange to say, you first set me on that new path of thought. A +conversation which passed between us years ago at D * * * * on the +antithesis of natural and revealed religion--perhaps you recollect it?" + +Yes, I recollected it better than he fancied, and recollected too--I thrust +the thought behind me--it was even yet intolerable. + +"That conversation first awoke in me the sense of an hitherto unconscious +inconsistency--a desire to reconcile two lines of thought--which I had +hitherto considered as parallel, and impossible to unite. To you, and to my +beloved niece here, I owe gratitude for that evening's talk; and you are +freely welcome to all my conclusions, for you have been, indirectly, the +originator of them all." + +"Then, I must confess, that miracles seem to me impossible, just because +they break the laws of Nature. Pardon me--but there seems something +blasphemous in supposing that God can mar His own order: His power I do not +call in question, but the very thought of His so doing is abhorrent to me." + +"It is as abhorrent to me as it can be to you, to Goethe, or to Strauss; +and yet I believe firmly in our Lord's miracles." + +"How so, if they break the laws of Nature?" + +"Who told you, my dear young friend, that to break the customs of Nature, +is to break her laws? A phenomenon, an appearance, whether it be a miracle +or a comet, need not contradict them because it is rare, because it is as +yet not referable to them. Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are +her invisible ones. All analyses (I think you know enough to understand +my terms), whether of appearances, of causes, or of elements, only lead +us down to fresh appearances--we cannot see a law, let the power of our +lens be ever so immense. The true causes remain just as impalpable, +as unfathomable as ever, eluding equally our microscope and our +induction--ever tending towards some great primal law, as Mr. Grove has +well shown lately in his most valuable pamphlet--some great primal law, I +say, manifesting itself, according to circumstances, in countless diverse +and unexpected forms--till all that the philosopher as well as the divine +can say, is--the Spirit of Life, impalpable, transcendental, direct from +God, is the only real cause. 'It bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest +the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it +goeth.' What, if miracles should be the orderly result of some such deep, +most orderly, and yet most spiritual law?" + +"I feel the force of your argument, but--" + +"But you will confess, at least, that you, after the fashion of the crowd, +have begun your argument by begging the very question in dispute, and may +have, after all, created the very difficulty which torments you." + +"I confess it; but I cannot see how the miracles of Jesus--of our +Lord--have anything of order in them." + +"Tell me, then--to try the Socratic method--is disease, or health, the +order and law of Nature?" + +"Health, surely; we all confess that by calling diseases disorders." + +"Then, would one who healed diseases be a restorer, or a breaker of order?" + +"A restorer, doubtless; but--" + +"Like a patient scholar, and a scholarly patient, allow me to 'exhibit' +my own medicines according to my own notion of the various crises of your +distemper. I assure you I will not play you false, or entrap you by quips +and special pleading. You are aware that our Lord's miracles were almost +exclusively miracles of healing--restorations of that order of health which +disease was breaking--that when the Scribes and Pharisees, superstitious +and sense-bound, asked him for a sign from heaven, a contra-natural +prodigy, he refused them as peremptorily as he did the fiend's 'Command +these stones that they be made bread.' You will quote against me the water +turned into wine, as an exception to this rule. St. Augustine answered that +objection centuries ago, by the same argument as I am now using. Allow +Jesus to have been the Lord of Creation, and what was he doing then, but +what he does in the maturing of every grape--transformed from air and +water even as that wine in Cana? Goethe, himself, unwittingly, has made +Mephistopheles even say as much as that-- + + "Wine is sap, and grapes are wood, + The wooden board yields wine as good." + +"But the time?--so infinitely shorter than that which Nature usually +occupies in the process?" + +"Time and space are no Gods, as a wise German says; and as the electric +telegraph ought already to have taught you. They are customs, but who has +proved them to be laws of Nature? No; analyse these miracles one by one, +fairly, carefully, scientifically, and you will find that if you want +prodigies really blasphemous and absurd, infractions of the laws of Nature, +amputated limbs growing again, and dead men walking away with their heads +under their arms, you must go to the Popish legends, but not to the +miracles of the Gospels. And now for your 'but'--" + +"The raising of the dead to life? Surely death is the appointed end of +every animal--ay, of every species, and of man among the rest." + +"Who denies it? But is premature death?--the death of Jairus's daughter, of +the widow's son at Nain, the death of Jesus himself, in the prime of youth +and vigour--or rather that gradual decay of ripe old age, through which I +now, thank God, so fast am travelling? What nobler restoration of order, +what clearer vindication of the laws of Nature from the disorder of +diseases, than to recall the dead to their natural and normal period of +life?" + +I was silent a few moments, having nothing to answer; then-- + +"After all, these may have been restorations of the law of Nature. But why +was the law broken in order to restore it? The Tenth of April has taught +me, at least, that disorder cannot cast disorder out." + +"Again I ask, why do you assume the very point in question? Again I ask, +who knows what really are the laws of Nature? You have heard Bacon's golden +rule--'Nature is conquered by obeying her?'" + +"I have." + +"Then who more likely, who more certain, to fulfil that law to hitherto +unattained perfection, than He who came to obey, not outward nature merely, +but, as Bacon meant, the inner ideas, the spirit of Nature, which is the +will of God?--He who came to do utterly, not His own will, but the will +of the Father who sent Him? Who is so presumptuous as to limit the future +triumphs of science? Surely no one who has watched her giant strides during +the last century. Shall Stephenson and Faraday, and the inventors of the +calculating machine, and the electric telegraph, have fulfilled such +wonders by their weak and partial obedience to the 'Will of God expressed +in things'--and He who obeyed, even unto the death, have possessed no +higher power than theirs?" + +"Indeed," I said, "your words stagger me. But there is another old +objection which they have reawakened in my mind. You will say I am shifting +my ground sadly. But you must pardon me" + +"Let us hear. They need not be irrelevant. The unconscious logic of +association is often deeper and truer than any syllogism." + +"These modern discoveries in medicine seem to show that Christ's miracles +may be attributed to natural causes." + +"And thereby justify them. For what else have I been arguing. The +difficulty lies only in the rationalist's shallow and sensuous view of +Nature, and in his ambiguous, slip-slop trick of using the word natural +to mean, in one sentence, 'material,' and in the next, as I use it, only +'normal and orderly.' Every new wonder in medicine which this great age +discovers--what does it prove, but that Christ need have broken no natural +laws to do that of old, which can be done now without breaking them--if you +will but believe that these gifts of healing are all inspired and revealed +by Him who is the Great Physician, the Life, the Lord of that vital energy +by whom all cures are wrought. + +"The surgeons of St. George's make the boy walk who has been lame from his +mother's womb. But have they given life to a single bone or muscle of his +limbs? They have only put them into that position--those circumstances in +which the God-given life in them can have its free and normal play, and +produce the cure which they only assist. I claim that miracle of science, +as I do all future ones, as the inspiration of Him who made the lame +to walk in Judea, not by producing new organs, but by His creative +will--quickening and liberating those which already existed. + +"The mesmerist, again, says that he can cure a spirit of infirmity, an +hysteric or paralytic patient, by shedding forth on them his own vital +energy; and, therefore he will have it, that Christ's miracles were but +mesmeric feats. I grant, for the sake of argument, that he possesses +the power which he claims; though I may think his facts too new, too +undigested, often too exaggerated, to claim my certain assent. But, I say, +I take you on your own ground; and, indeed, if man be the image of God, his +vital energy may, for aught I know, be able, like God's, to communicate +some spark of life--But then, what must have been the vital energy of Him +who was the life itself; who was filled without measure with the spirit, +not only of humanity, but with that of God the Lord and Giver of life? Do +but let the Bible tell its own story; grant, for the sake of argument, +the truth of the dogmas which it asserts throughout, and it becomes +a consistent whole. When a man begins, as Strauss does, by assuming +the falsity of its conclusions, no wonder if he finds its premises a +fragmentary chaos of contradictions." + +"And what else?" asked Eleanor, passionately--"what else is the meaning +of that highest human honour, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but a +perennial token that the same life-giving spirit is the free right of all?" + +And thereon followed happy, peaceful, hopeful words, which the reader, if +he call himself a Christian, ought to be able to imagine for himself. I am +afraid that writing from memory, I should do as little justice to them as +I have to the dean's arguments in this chapter. Of the consequences which +they produced in me, I will speak anon. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +NEMESIS. + + +It was a month or more before I summoned courage to ask after my cousin. + +Eleanor looked solemnly at me. + +"Did you not know it? He is dead." + +"Dead!" I was almost stunned by the announcement. + +"Of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago; and not only he, but the servant +who brushed his clothes, and the shopman, who had a few days before, +brought him a new coat home." + +"How did you learn all this?" + +"From Mr. Crossthwaite. But the strangest part of the sad story is to come. +Crossthwaite's suspicions were aroused by some incidental circumstance, and +knowing of Downes's death, and the fact that you most probably caught your +fever in that miserable being's house, he made such inquiries as satisfied +him that it was no other than your cousin's coat--" + +"Which covered the corpses in that fearful chamber?" + +"It was indeed." + +Just, awful God. And this was the consistent Nemesis of all poor +George's thrift and cunning, of his determination to carry the +buy-cheap-and-sell-dear commercialism, in which he had been brought up, +into every act of life! Did I rejoice? No; all revenge, all spite had been +scourged out of me. I mourned for him as for a brother, till the thought +flashed across me--Lillian was free. Half unconscious, I stammered her name +inquiringly. + +"Judge for yourself," answered Eleanor, mildly, yet with a deep, severe +meaning in her tone. + +I was silent. + + * * * * * + +The tempest in my heart was ready to burst forth again; but she, my +guardian angel, soothed it for me. + +"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the fever, +and, alas! less resignation or peace within, than those who love her +would have wished to see--have worn her down. Little remains now of that +loveliness--" + +"Which I idolized in my folly!" + +"Thank God, thank God! that you see that at last: I knew it all along. I +knew that there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon--nothing +to satisfy your intellect--and, therefore, I tried to turn you from your +dream. I did it harshly, angrily, too sharply, yet not explicitly enough. I +ought to have made allowances for you. I should have known how enchanting, +intoxicating, mere outward perfections must have been to one of your +perceptions, shut out so long as you had been from the beautiful in art and +nature. But I was cruel. Alas! I had not then learnt to sympathize; and I +have often since felt with terror that I, too, may have many of your sins +to answer for; that I, even I, helped to drive you on to bitterness and +despair." + +"Oh, do not say so! You have done to me, meant to me, nothing but good." + +"Be not too sure of that. You little know me. You little know the pride +which I have fostered--even the mean anger against you, for being the +protege of any one but myself. That exclusiveness, and shyness, and proud +reserve, is the bane of our English character--it has been the bane of +mine--daily I strive to root it out. Come--I will do so now. You wonder why +I am here. You shall hear somewhat of my story; and do not fancy that I am +showing you a peculiar mark of honour or confidence. If the history of my +life can be of use to the meanest, they are welcome to the secrets of my +inmost heart. + +"I was my parents' only child, an heiress, highly born, and highly +educated. Every circumstance of humanity which could pamper pride was mine, +and I battened on the poison. I painted, I sang, I wrote in prose and +verse--they told me, not without success. Men said that I was beautiful--I +knew that myself, and revelled and gloried in the thought. Accustomed to +see myself the centre of all my parents' hopes and fears, to be surrounded +by flatterers, to indulge in secret the still more fatal triumph of +contempt for those I thought less gifted than myself, self became the +centre of my thoughts. Pleasure was all I thought of. But not what the +vulgar call pleasure. That I disdained, while, like you, I worshipped all +that was pleasurable to the intellect and the taste. The beautiful was my +God. I lived, in deliberate intoxication, on poetry, music, painting, and +every anti-type of them which I could find in the world around. At last I +met with--one whom you once saw. He first awoke in me the sense of the vast +duties and responsibilities of my station--his example first taught me to +care for the many rather than for the few. It was a blessed lesson: yet +even that I turned to poison, by making self, still self, the object of my +very benevolence. To be a philanthropist, a philosopher, a feudal queen, +amid the blessings and the praise of dependent hundreds--that was my new +ideal; for that I turned the whole force of my intellect to the study +of history, of social and economic questions. From Bentham and Malthus +to Fourier and Proudhon, I read them all. I made them all fit into that +idol-temple of self which I was rearing, and fancied that I did my duty, by +becoming one of the great ones of the earth. My ideal was not the crucified +Nazarene, but some Hairoun Alraschid, in luxurious splendour, pampering +his pride by bestowing as a favour those mercies which God commands as +the right of all. I thought to serve God, forsooth, by serving Mammon and +myself. Fool that I was! I could not see God's handwriting on the wall +against me. 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom +of heaven!'... + +"You gave me, unintentionally, a warning hint. The capabilities which I +saw in you made me suspect that those below might be more nearly my equals +than I had yet fancied. Your vivid descriptions of the misery among whole +classes of workmen--misery caused and ever increased by the very system of +society itself--gave a momentary shock to my fairy palace. They drove me +back upon the simple old question, which has been asked by every honest +heart, age after age, 'What right have I to revel in luxury while thousands +are starving? Why do I pride myself on doling out to them small fractions +of that wealth, which, if sacrificed utterly and at once, might help +to raise hundreds to a civilization as high as my own?' I could not +face the thought; and angry with you for having awakened it, however +unintentionally, I shrank back behind the pitiable, worn-out fallacy, that +luxury was necessary to give employment. I knew that it was a fallacy; I +knew that the labour spent in producing unnecessary things for one rich man +may just as well have gone in producing necessaries for a hundred poor, or +employ the architect and the painter for public bodies as well as private +individuals. That even for the production of luxuries, the monopolizing +demand of the rich was not required--that the appliances of real +civilization, the landscapes, gardens, stately rooms, baths, books, +pictures, works of art, collections of curiosities, which now went to +pamper me alone--me, one single human soul--might be helping, in an +associate society, to civilize a hundred families, now debarred from them +by isolated poverty, without robbing me of an atom of the real enjoyment or +benefit of them. I knew it, I say, to be a fallacy, and yet I hid behind it +from the eye of God. Besides, 'it always had been so--the few rich, and the +many poor. I was but one more among millions.'" + +She paused a moment as if to gather strength, and then continued: + +"The blow came. My idol--for he, too, was an idol--To please him I had +begun--To please myself in pleasing him, I was trying to become great--and +with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the +triumph of my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty +change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me +to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine +insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that +period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that nothing +henceforth could seem strange to me. I had broken the yoke of custom and +opinion. My only ground was now the bare realities of human life and duty. +In poverty and loneliness I thought out the problems of society, and seemed +to myself to have found the one solution--self-sacrifice. Following my +first impulse, I had given largely to every charitable institution I could +hear of--God forbid that I should regret those gifts--yet the money, I +soon found, might have been better spent. One by one, every institution +disappointed me; they seemed, after all, only means for keeping the poor +in their degradation, by making it just not intolerable to them--means for +enabling Mammon to draw fresh victims into his den, by taking off his +hands those whom he had already worn out into uselessness. Then I tried +association among my own sex--among the most miserable and degraded of +them. I simply tried to put them into a position in which they might work +for each other, and not for a single tyrant; in which that tyrant's profits +might be divided among the slaves themselves. Experienced men warned me +that I should fail; that such a plan would be destroyed by the innate +selfishness and rivalry of human nature; that it demanded what was +impossible to find, good faith, fraternal love, overruling moral influence. +I answered, that I knew that already; that nothing but Christianity alone +could supply that want, but that it could and should supply it; that I +would teach them to live as sisters, by living with them as their sister +myself. To become the teacher, the minister, the slave of those whom I was +trying to rescue, was now my one idea; to lead them on, not by machinery, +but by precept, by example, by the influence of every gift and talent which +God had bestowed upon me; to devote to them my enthusiasm, my eloquence, my +poetry, my art, my science; to tell them who had bestowed their gifts on +me, and would bestow, to each according to her measure, the same on them; +to make my workrooms, in one word, not a machinery, but a family. And +I have succeeded--as others will succeed, long after my name, my small +endeavours, are forgotten amid the great new world--new Church I should +have said--of enfranchised and fraternal labour." + +And this was the suspected aristocrat! Oh, my brothers, my brothers! little +you know how many a noble soul, among those ranks which you consider only +as your foes, is yearning to love, to help, to live and die for you, did +they but know the way! Is it their fault if God has placed them where they +are? Is it their fault, if they refuse to part with their wealth, before +they are sure that such a sacrifice would really be a mercy to you? Show +yourselves worthy of association. Show that you can do justly, love mercy, +and walk humbly with your God, as brothers before one Father, subjects of +one crucified King--and see then whether the spirit of self-sacrifice is +dead among the rich! See whether there are not left in England yet seven +thousand who have not bowed the knee to Mammon, who will not fear to "give +their substance to the free," if they find that the Son has made you +free--free from your own sins, as well as from the sins of others! + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. + + +"But after all," I said one day, "the great practical objection still +remains unanswered--the clergy? Are we to throw ourselves into their +hands after all? Are we, who have been declaiming all our lives against +priestcraft, voluntarily to forge again the chains of our slavery to a +class whom we neither trust nor honour?" + +She smiled. "If you will examine the Prayer-Book, you will not find, as +far as I am aware, anything which binds a man to become the slave of +the priesthood, voluntarily or otherwise. Whether the people become +priest-ridden or not, hereafter, will depend, as it always has done, +utterly on themselves. As long as the people act upon their spiritual +liberty, and live with eyes undimmed by superstitious fear, fixed in loving +boldness on their Father in heaven, and their King, the first-born among +many brethren, the priesthood will remain, as God intended them, only the +interpreters and witnesses of His will and His kingdom. But let them turn +their eyes from Him to aught in earth or heaven beside, and there will be +no lack of priestcraft, of veils to hide Him from them, tyrants to keep +them from Him, idols to ape His likeness. A sinful people will be sure to +be a priest-ridden people; in reality, though not in name; by journalists +and demagogues, if not by class-leaders and popes: and of the two, I +confess I should prefer a Hildebrand to an O'Flynn." + +"But," I replied, "we do not love, we do not trust, we do not respect the +clergy. Has their conduct to the masses for the last century deserved that +we should do so? Will you ask us to obey the men whom we despise?" + +"God forbid!" she answered. "But you must surely be aware of the +miraculous, ever-increasing improvement in the clergy." + +"In morals," I said, "and in industry, doubtless; but not upon those points +which are to us just now dearer than their morals or their industry, +because they involve the very existence of our own industry and our own +morals--I mean, social and political subjects. On them the clergy seem to +me as ignorant, as bigoted, as aristocratic as ever." + +"But, suppose that there were a rapidly-increasing class among the clergy, +who were willing to help you to the uttermost--and you must feel that their +help would be worth having--towards the attainment of social reform, if you +would waive for a time merely political reform?" + +"What?" I said, "give up the very ideas for which we have struggled, and +sinned, and all but died? and will struggle, and, if need be, die for +still, or confess ourselves traitors to the common weal?" + +"The Charter, like its supporters, must die to itself before it lives to +God. Is it not even now farther off than ever?" + +"It seems so indeed--but what do you mean?" + +"You regarded the Charter as an absolute end. You made a selfish and a +self-willed idol of it. And therefore God's blessing did not rest on it or +you." + +"We want it as a means as well as an end--as a means for the highest and +widest social reform, as well as a right dependent on eternal justice." + +"Let the working classes prove that, then," she replied, "in their actions +now. If it be true, as I would fain believe it to be, let them show that +they are willing to give up their will to God's will; to compass those +social reforms by the means which God puts in their way, and wait for His +own good time to give them, or not to give them, those means which they in +their own minds prefer. This is what I meant by saying that Chartism must +die to itself before it has a chance of living to God. You must feel, too, +that Chartism has sinned--has defiled itself in the eyes of the wise, the +good, the gentle. Your only way now to soften the prejudice against it is +to show that you can live like men and brothers and Christians without it. +You cannot wonder if the clergy shall object awhile to help you towards +that Charter, which the majority of you demanded for the express purpose of +destroying the creed which the clergy do believe, however badly they may +have acted upon it." + +"It is all true enough--bitterly true. But yet, why do we need the help of +the clergy?" + +"Because you need the help of the whole nation; because there are other +classes to be considered beside yourselves; because the nation is neither +the few nor the many, but the all; because it is only by the co-operation +of all the members of a body, that any one member can fulfil its calling in +health and freedom; because, as long as you stand aloof from the clergy, or +from any other class, through pride, self-interest, or wilful ignorance, +you are keeping up those very class distinctions of which you and I too +complain, as 'hateful equally to God and to his enemies;' and, finally, +because the clergy are the class which God has appointed to unite all +others; which, in as far as it fulfils its calling, and is indeed a +priesthood, is above and below all rank, and knows no man after the flesh, +but only on the ground of his spiritual worth, and his birthright in that +kingdom which is the heritage of all." + +"Truly," I answered, "the idea is a noble one--But look at the reality! Has +not priestly pandering to tyrants made the Church, in every age, a scoff +and a byword among free men?" + +"May it ever do so," she replied, "whenever such a sin exists! But yet, +look at the other side of the picture. Did not the priesthood, in the +first ages, glory not in the name, but, what is better, in the office, of +democrats? Did not the Roman tyrants hunt them down as wild beasts, because +they were democrats, proclaiming to the slave and to the barbarian a +spiritual freedom and a heavenly citizenship, before which the Roman well +knew his power must vanish into naught? Who, during the invasion of the +barbarians, protected the poor against their conquerors? Who, in the middle +age, stood between the baron and his serfs? Who, in their monasteries, +realized spiritual democracy,--the nothingness of rank and wealth, the +practical might of co-operation and self-sacrifice? Who delivered England +from the Pope? Who spread throughout every cottage in the land the Bible +and Protestantism, the book and the religion which declares that a man's +soul is free in the sight of God? Who, at the martyr's stake in Oxford, +'lighted the candle in England that shall never be put out?' Who, by +suffering, and not by rebellion, drove the last perjured Stuart from his +throne, and united every sect and class in one of the noblest steps in +England's progress? You will say these are the exceptions; I say nay; they +are rather a few great and striking manifestations of an influence +which has been, unseen though not unfelt, at work for ages, converting, +consecrating, organizing, every fresh invention of mankind, and which is +now on the eve of christianizing democracy, as it did Mediaeval Feudalism, +Tudor Nationalism, Whig Constitutionalism; and which will succeed in +christianizing it, and so alone making it rational, human, possible; +because the priesthood alone, of all human institutions, testifies of +Christ the King of men, the Lord of all things, the inspirer of all +discoveries; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all things under +His feet, and the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of God and +of His Christ. Be sure, as it always has been, so will it be now. Without +the priesthood there is no freedom for the people. Statesmen know it; and, +therefore, those who would keep the people fettered, find it necessary +to keep the priesthood fettered also. The people never can be themselves +without co-operation with the priesthood; and the priesthood never can be +themselves without co-operation with the people. They may help to make a +sect-Church for the rich, as they have been doing, or a sect-Church for +paupers (which is also the most subtle form of a sect-Church for the rich), +as a party in England are trying now to do--as I once gladly would have +done myself: but if they would be truly priests of God, and priests of +the Universal Church, they must be priests of the people, priests of the +masses, priests after the likeness of Him who died on the cross." + +"And are there any men," I said, "who believe this? and, what is more, have +courage to act upon it, now in the very hour of Mammon's triumph?" + +"There are those who are willing, who are determined, whatever it may cost +them, to fraternize with those whom they take shame to themselves for +having neglected; to preach and to organize, in concert with them, a Holy +War against the social abuses which are England's shame; and, first +and foremost, against the fiend of competition. They do not want to be +dictators to the working men. They know that they have a message to the +artizan, but they know, too, that the artizan has a message to them; and +they are not afraid to hear it. They do not wish to make him a puppet for +any system of their own; they only are willing, if he will take the hand +they offer him, to devote themselves, body and soul, to the great end of +enabling the artizan to govern himself; to produce in the capacity of +a free man, and not of a slave; to eat the food he earns, and wear the +clothes he makes. Will your working brothers co-operate with these men? +Are they, do you think, such bigots as to let political differences stand +between them and those who fain would treat them as their brothers; or will +they fight manfully side by side with them in the battle against Mammon, +trusting to God, that if in anything they are otherwise minded, He will, in +His own good time, reveal even that unto them? Do you think, to take one +instance, the men of your own trade would heartily join a handful of these +men in an experiment of associate labour, even though there should be a +clergyman or two among them?" + +"Join them?" I said. "Can you ask the question? I, for one, would devote +myself, body and soul, to any enterprise so noble. Crossthwaite would ask +for nothing higher, than to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to an +establishment of associate workmen. But, alas! his fate is fixed for the +New World; and mine, I verily believe, for sickness and the grave. And yet +I will answer for it, that, in the hopes of helping such a project, he +would give up Mackaye's bequest, for the mere sake of remaining in England; +and for me, if I have but a month of life, it is at the service of such men +as you describe." + +"Oh!" she said, musingly, "if poor Mackaye had but had somewhat more faith +in the future, that fatal condition would perhaps never have been attached +to his bequest. And yet, perhaps, it is better as it is. Crossthwaite's +mind may want quite, as much as yours does, a few years of a simpler and +brighter atmosphere to soften and refresh it again. Besides, your health is +too weak, your life, I know, too valuable to your class, for us to trust +you on such a voyage alone. He must go with you." + +"With me?" I said. "You must be misinformed; I have no thought of leaving +England." + +"You know the opinion of the physicians?" + +"I know that my life is not likely to be a long one; that immediate removal +to a southern, if possible to a tropical climate, is considered the only +means of preserving it. For the former I care little; _non est tanti +vivere_. And, indeed, the latter, even if it would succeed, is impossible. +Crossthwaite will live and thrive by the labour of his hands; while, for +such a helpless invalid as I to travel, would be to dissipate the little +capital which Mackaye has left me. + +"The day will come, when society will find it profitable, as well as just, +to put the means of preserving life by travel within the reach of the +poorest. But individuals must always begin by setting the examples, which +the state too slowly, though surely (for the world is God's world after +all), will learn to copy. All is arranged for you. Crossthwaite, you know, +would have sailed ere now, had it not been for your fever. Next week +you start with him for Texas, No; make no objections. All expenses are +defrayed--no matter by whom." + +"By you! By you! Who else?" + +"Do you think that I monopolize the generosity of England? Do you think +warm hearts beat only in the breasts of working men? But, if it were I, +would not that be only another reason for submitting? You must go. You will +have, for the next three years, such an allowance as will support you in +comfort, whether you choose to remain stationary, or, as I hope, to travel +southward into Mexico. Your passage-money is already paid." + +Why should I attempt to describe my feelings? I gasped for breath, and +looked stupidly at her for a minute or two.--The second darling hope of my +life within my reach, just as the first had been snatched from me! At last +I found words. + +"No, no, noble lady! Do not tempt me! Who am I, the slave of impulse, +useless, worn out in mind and body, that you should waste such generosity +upon me? I do not refuse from the honest pride of independence; I have not +man enough left in me even for that. But will you, of all people, ask me +to desert the starving suffering thousands, to whom my heart, my honour +are engaged; to give up the purpose of my life, and pamper my fancy in a +luxurious paradise, while they are slaving here?" + +"What? Cannot God find champions for them when you are gone? Has he not +found them already? Believe me, that Tenth of April, which you fancied the +death-day of liberty, has awakened a spirit in high as well as in low life, +which children yet unborn will bless." + +"Oh, do not mistake me! Have I not confessed my own weakness? But if I have +one healthy nerve left in me, soul or body, it will retain its strength +only as long as it thrills with devotion to the people's cause. If I live, +I must live among them, for them. If I die, I must die at my post. I could +not rest, except in labour. I dare not fly, like Jonah, from the call of +God. In the deepest shade of the virgin forests, on the loneliest peak of +the Cordilleras, He would find me out; and I should hear His still small +voice reproving me, as it reproved the fugitive patriot-seer of old--What +doest thou here, Elijah?" + +I was excited, and spoke, I am afraid, after my custom, somewhat too +magniloquently. But she answered only with a quiet smile: + +"So you are a Chartist still?" + +"If by a Chartist you mean one who fancies that a change in mere political +circumstances will bring about a millennium, I am no longer one. That dream +is gone--with others. But if to be a Chartist is to love my brothers with +every faculty of my soul--to wish to live and die struggling for their +rights, endeavouring to make them, not electors merely, but fit to be +electors, senators, kings, and priests to God and to His Christ--if that +be the Chartism of the future, then am I sevenfold a Chartist, and ready +to confess it before men, though I were thrust forth from every door in +England." + +She was silent a moment. + +"'The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.' +Surely the old English spirit has cast its madness, and begins to speak +once more as it spoke in Naseby fights and Smithfield fires!" + +"And yet you would quench it in me amid the enervating climate of the +tropics." + +"Need it be quenched there? Was it quenched in Drake, in Hawkins, in the +conquerors of Hindostan? Weakness, like strength, is from within, of the +spirit, and not of sunshine. I would send you thither, that you may gain +new strength, new knowledge to carry out your dream and mine. Do not refuse +me the honour of preserving you. Do not forbid me to employ my wealth in +the only way which reconciles my conscience to the possession of it. I have +saved many a woman already; and this one thing remained--the highest of all +my hopes and longings--that God would allow me, ere I die, to save a man. +I have longed to find some noble soul, as Carlyle says, fallen down by the +wayside, and lift it up, and heal its wounds, and teach it the secret of +its heavenly birthright, and consecrate it to its King in heaven. I have +longed to find a man of the people, whom I could train to be the poet of +the people." + +"Me, at least, you have saved, have taught, have trained! Oh that your care +had been bestowed on some more worthy object!" + +"Let me, at least, then, perfect my own work. You do not--it is a sign +of your humility that you do not--appreciate the value of this rest. You +underrate at once your own powers, and the shock which they have received." + +"If I must go, then, why so far? Why put you to so great expense? If you +must be generous, send me to some place nearer home--to Italy, to the coast +of Devon, or the Isle of Wight, where invalids like me are said to find all +the advantages which are so often, perhaps too hastily, sought in foreign +lands." + +"No," she said, smiling; "you are my servant now, by the laws of chivalry, +and you must fulfil my quest. I have long hoped for a tropic poet; one +who should leave the routine imagery of European civilization, its meagre +scenery, and physically decrepit races, for the grandeur, the luxuriance, +the infinite and strongly-marked variety of tropic nature, the paradisiac +beauty and simplicity of tropic humanity. I am tired of the old images; of +the barren alternations between Italy and the Highlands. I had once dreamt +of going to the tropics myself; but my work lay elsewhere. Go for me, and +for the people. See if you cannot help to infuse some new blood into the +aged veins of English literature; see if you cannot, by observing man in +his mere simple and primeval state, bring home fresh conceptions of beauty, +fresh spiritual and physical laws of his existence, that you may realize +them here at home--(how, I see as yet but dimly; but He who teaches the +facts will surely teach their application)--in the cottages, in the +play-grounds, the reading-rooms, the churches of working men." + +"But I know so little--I have seen so little!" + +"That very fact, I flatter myself, gives you an especial vocation for my +scheme. Your ignorance of cultivated English scenery, and of Italian art, +will enable you to approach with a more reverend, simple, and unprejudiced +eye the primeval forms of beauty--God's work, not man's. Sin you will +see there, and anarchy, and tyranny, but I do not send you to look for +society, but for nature. I do not send you to become a barbarian settler, +but to bring home to the realms of civilization those ideas of physical +perfection, which as yet, alas! barbarism, rather than civilization, has +preserved. Do not despise your old love for the beautiful. Do not fancy +that because you have let it become an idol and a tyrant, it was not +therefore the gift of God. Cherish it, develop it to the last; steep your +whole soul in beauty; watch it in its most vast and complex harmonies, +and not less in its most faint and fragmentary traces. Only, hitherto you +have blindly worshipped it; now you must learn to comprehend, to master, +to embody it; to show it forth to men as the sacrament of Heaven, the +finger-mark of God!" + +Who could resist such pleading from those lips? I at least could not. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD. + + +Before the same Father, the same King, crucified for all alike, we had +partaken of the same bread and wine, we had prayed for the same spirit. +Side by side, around the chair on which I lay propped up with pillows, +coughing my span of life away, had knelt the high-born countess, the +cultivated philosopher, the repentant rebel, the wild Irish girl, her +slavish and exclusive creed exchanged for one more free and all-embracing; +and that no extremest type of human condition might be wanting, the +reclaimed Magdalene was there--two pale worn girls from Eleanor's asylum, +in whom I recognized the needlewomen to whom Mackaye had taken me, on +a memorable night, seven years before. Thus--and how better?--had God +rewarded their loving care of that poor dying fellow-slave. + +Yes--we had knelt together: and I had felt that we were one--that there was +a bond between us, real, eternal, independent of ourselves, knit not by +man, but God; and the peace of God, which passes understanding, came over +me like the clear sunshine after weary rain. + +One by one they shook me by the hand, and quitted the room; and Eleanor and +I were left alone. + +"See!" she said, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood are come; but not as +you expected." + +Blissful, repentant tears blinded my eyes, as I replied, not to her, but to +Him who spoke by her-- + +"Lord! not as I will, but as thou wilt!" + +"Yes," she continued, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood are here. Realize +them in thine own self, and so alone thou helpest to make them realities +for all. Not from without, from Charters and Republics, but from within, +from the Spirit working in each; not by wrath and haste, but by patience +made perfect through suffering, canst thou proclaim their good news to +the groaning masses, and deliver them, as thy Master did before thee, +by the cross, and not the sword. Divine paradox!--Folly to the rich and +mighty--the watchword of the weak, in whose weakness is God's strength made +perfect. 'In your patience possess ye your souls, for the coming of the +Lord draweth nigh.' Yes--He came then, and the Babel-tyranny of Rome fell, +even as the more fearful, more subtle, and more diabolic tyranny of Mammon +shall fall ere long--suicidal, even now crumbling by its innate decay. +Yes--Babylon the Great--the commercial world of selfish competition, +drunken with the blood of God's people, whose merchandise is the bodies +and souls of men--her doom is gone forth. And then--then--when they, the +tyrants of the earth, who lived delicately with her, rejoicing in her sins, +the plutocrats and bureaucrats, the money-changers and devourers of labour, +are crying to the rocks to hide them, and to the hills to cover them, from +the wrath of Him that sitteth on the throne--then labour shall be free at +last, and the poor shall eat and be satisfied, with things that eye hath +not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to +conceive, but which God has prepared for those who love Him. Then the +earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the +sea, and mankind at last shall own their King--Him. in whom they are all +redeemed into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God, and He shall reign +indeed on earth, and none but His saints shall rule beside Him. And then +shall this sacrament be an everlasting sign to all the nations of the +world, as it has been to you this day, of freedom, equality, brotherhood, +of Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will toward +men. Do you believe?" + +Again I answered, not her, but Him who sent her-- + +"Lord, I believe! Help thou mine unbelief!" + +"And now farewell. I shall not see you again before you start--and ere you +return--My health has been fast declining lately." + +I started--I had not dared to confess to myself how thin her features had +become of late. I had tried not to hear the dry and hectic cough, or see +the burning spot on either cheek--but it was too true; and with a broken +voice I cried: + +"Oh that I might die, and join you!" + +"Not so--I trust that you have still a work to do. But if not, promise me +that, whatever be the event of your voyage, you will publish, in good time, +an honest history of your life; extenuating nothing, exaggerating nothing, +ashamed to confess or too proclaim nothing. It may perhaps awaken some rich +man to look down and take pity on the brains and hearts more noble than +his own, which lie struggling in poverty and misguidance among these foul +sties, which civilization rears--and calls them cities. Now, once again, +farewell!" + +She held out her hand--I would have fallen at her feet, but the thought +of that common sacrament withheld me. I seized her hand, covered it with +adoring kisses--Slowly she withdrew it, and glided from the room-- + +What need of more words? I obeyed her--sailed--and here I am. + + * * * * * + +Yes! I have seen the land! Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea, "while +parting day dies like the dolphin," there it lay upon the fair horizon--the +great young free new world! and every tree, and flower, and insect on it +new!--a wonder and a joy--which I shall never see.... + +No,--I shall never reach the land. I felt it all along. Weaker and weaker, +day by day, with bleeding lungs and failing limbs, I have travelled the +ocean paths. The iron has entered too deeply into my soul.... + +Hark! Merry voices on deck are welcoming their future home. Laugh on, +happy ones!--come out of Egypt and the house of bondage, and the waste and +howling wilderness of slavery and competition, workhouses and prisons, into +a good land and large, a land flowing with milk and honey, where you will +sit every one under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and look into the +faces of your rosy children--and see in them a blessing and not a curse! +Oh, England! stern mother-land, when wilt thou renew thy youth?--Thou +wilderness of man's making, not God's!... Is it not written, that the +days shall come when the forest shall break forth into singing, and the +wilderness shall blossom like the rose? + +Hark! again, sweet and clear, across the still night sea, ring out the +notes of Crossthwaite's bugle--the first luxury, poor fellow, he ever +allowed himself; and yet not a selfish one, for music, like mercy, is twice +blessed-- + + "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." + +There is the spirit-stirring marching air of the German workmen students + + Thou, thou, thou, and thou, + Sir Master, fare thee well.-- + +Perhaps a half reproachful hint to the poor old England he is leaving. What +a glorious metre! warming one's whole heart into life and energy! If I +could but write in such a metre one true people's song, that should embody +all my sorrow, indignation, hope--fitting last words for a poet of the +people--for they will be my last words--Well--thank God! at least I shall +not be buried in a London churchyard! It may be a foolish fancy--but I have +made them promise to lay me up among the virgin woods, where, if the soul +ever visits the place of its body's rest, I may snatch glimpses of that +natural beauty from which I was barred out in life, and watch the gorgeous +flowers that bloom above my dust, and hear the forest birds sing around the +Poet's grave. + +Hark to the grand lilt of the "Good Time Coming!"--Song which has cheered +ten thousand hearts; which has already taken root, that it may live and +grow for ever--fitting melody to soothe my dying ears! Ah! how should there +not be A Good Time Coming?--Hope, and trust, and infinite deliverance!--a +time such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the +heart of man to conceive!--coming surely, soon or late, to those for whom a +God did not disdain to die! + + * * * * * + +Our only remaining duty is to give an extract from a letter written by John +Crossthwaite, and dated + +"GALVESTON, TEXAS, _October, 1848_. + +... "I am happy. Katie is happy, There is peace among us here, like 'the +clear downshining after rain.' But I thirst and long already for the +expiration of my seven years' exile, wholesome as I believe it to be. My +only wish is to return and assist in the Emancipation of Labour, and give +my small aid in that fraternal union of all classes which I hear is surely, +though slowly, spreading in my mother-land. + +"And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to my promise to him, +I transmit to you. On the very night on which he seems to have concluded +them--an hour after we had made the land--we found him in his cabin, dead, +his head resting on the table as peacefully as if he had slumbered. On a +sheet of paper by him were written the following verses; the ink was not +yet dry: + +"'MY LAST WORDS. + +"'I. + +"'Weep, weep, weep, and weep, + For pauper, dolt, and slave; + Hark! from wasted moor and fen, + Feverous alley, workhouse den, + Swells the wail of Englishmen: + "Work! or the grave!" + +"'II. + +"'Down, down, down, and down, + With idler, knave, and tyrant; + Why for sluggards stint and moil + He that will not live by toil + Has no right on English soil; + God's word's our warrant! + +"'III. + +"'Up, up, up, and up, + Face your game, and play it! + The night is past--behold the sun!-- + The cup is full, the web is spun, + The Judge is set, the doom begun; + Who shall stay it?'" + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET *** + +This file should be named 7allk10.txt or 7allk10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7allk11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7allk10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet + +Author: Rev. Charles Kingsley et al + +Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8374] +[This file was first posted on July 4, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET *** + + + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +ALTON LOCKE, + +TAILOR AND POET + +An Autobiography. + +BY THE REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, + +CANON OF WESTMINSTER, RECTOR OF EVERSLEY, +AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN AND PRINCE OF WALES, + +_NEW EDITION_, + + + + + + + +WITH A PREFATORY MEMOIR BY THOMAS HUGHES, ESQ., Q.C., + +AUTHOR OF "TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS." + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +PREFATORY MEMOIR + +CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY + +PREFACE--TO THE UNDERGRADUATES OF CAMBRIDGE + +PREFACE--TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN + +CHAPTER I. A POET'S CHILDHOOD + +CHAPTER II. THE TAILORS' WORKROOM + +CHAPTER III. SANDY MACKAYE + +CHAPTER IV. TAILORS AND SOLDIERS + +CHAPTER V. THE SCEPTIC'S MOTHER + +CHAPTER VI. THE DULWICH GALLERY + +CHAPTER VII. FIRST LOVE + +CHAPTER VIII. LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE + +CHAPTER IX. POETRY AND POETS + +CHAPTER X. HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS + +CHAPTER XI. "THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE" + +CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE + +CHAPTER XIII. THE LOST IDOL FOUND + +CHAPTER XIV. A CATHEDRAL TOWN + +CHAPTER XV. THE MAN OF SCIENCE + +CHAPTER XVI. CULTIVATED WOMEN + +CHAPTER XVII. SERMONS IN STONES + +CHAPTER XVIII. MY FALL + +CHAPTER XIX. SHORT AND SAD + +CHAPTER XX. PEGASUS IN HARNESS + +CHAPTER XXI. THE SWEATER'S DEN + +CHAPTER XXII. AN EMERSONIAN SERMON + +CHAPTER XXIII. THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS + +CHAPTER XXIV. THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN + +CHAPTER XXV. A TRUE NOBLEMAN + +CHAPTER XXVI. THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR + +CHAPTER XXVII. THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY + +CHAPTER XXVIII. THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN + +CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRIAL + +CHAPTER XXX. PRISON THOUGHTS + +CHAPTER XXXI. THE NEW CHURCH + +CHAPTER XXXII. THE TOWER OF BABEL + +CHAPTER XXXIII. A PATRIOT'S REWARD + +CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TENTH OF APRIL + +CHAPTER XXXV. THE LOWEST DEEP + +CHAPTER XXXVI. DREAMLAND + +CHAPTER XXXVII. THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. MIRACLES ASD SCIENCE + +CHAPTER XXXIX. NEMESIS + +CHAPTER XL. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE + +CHAPTER XLI. FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD + + + + +PREFATORY MEMOIR. + + +The tract appended to this preface has been chosen to accompany this +reprint of _Alton Locke_ in order to illustrate, from another side, a +distinct period in the life of Charles Kingsley, which stands out very much +by itself. It may be taken roughly to have extended from 1848 to 1856. It +has been thought that they require a preface, and I have undertaken to +write it, as one of the few survivors of those who were most intimately +associated with the author at the time to which the works refer. + +No easy task; for, look at them from what point we will, these years must +be allowed to cover an anxious and critical time in modern English history; +but, above all, in the history of the working classes. In the first of them +the Chartist agitation came to a head and burst, and was followed by the +great movement towards association, which, developing in two directions and +by two distinct methods--represented respectively by the amalgamated Trades +Unions, and Co-operative Societies--has in the intervening years entirely +changed the conditions of the labour question in England, and the relations +of the working to the upper and middle classes. It is with this, the social +and industrial side of the history of those years, that we are mainly +concerned here. Charles Kingsley has left other and more important writings +of those years. But these are beside our purpose, which is to give some +such slight sketch of him as may be possible within the limits of a +preface, in the character in which he was first widely known, as the most +outspoken and powerful of those who took the side of the labouring classes, +at a critical time--the crisis in a word, when they abandoned their old +political weapons, for the more potent one of union and association, which +has since carried them so far. + +To no one of all those to whom his memory is very dear can this seem a +superfluous task, for no writer was ever more misunderstood or better +abused at the time, and after the lapse of almost a quarter of a century +the misunderstanding would seem still to hold its ground. For through all +the many notices of him which appeared after his death in last January, +there ran the same apologetic tone as to this part of his life's work. +While generally, and as a rule cordially, recognizing his merits as an +author and a man, the writers seemed to agree in passing lightly over this +ground. When it was touched it was in a tone of apology, sometimes tinged +with sarcasm, as in the curt notice in the "Times"--"He was understood, to +be the Parson Lot of those 'Politics for the People' which made no little +noise in their time, and as Parson Lot he declared in burning language +that to his mind the fault in the 'People's Charter' was that it did not +go nearly far enough." And so the writer turns away, as do most of his +brethren, leaving probably some such impression as this on the minds of +most of their readers--"Young men of power and genius are apt to start with +wild notions. He was no exception. Parson Lot's sayings and doings may well +be pardoned for what Charles Kingsley said and did in after years; so let +us drop a decent curtain over them, and pass on." + +Now, as very nearly a generation has passed since that signature used to +appear at the foot of some of the most noble and vigorous writing of our +time, readers of to-day are not unlikely to accept this view, and so to +find further confirmation and encouragement in the example of Parson Lot +for the mischievous and cowardly distrust of anything like enthusiasm +amongst young men, already sadly too prevalent in England. If it were only +as a protest against this "surtout point de zèle" spirit, against which it +was one of Charles Kingsley's chief tasks to fight with all his strength, +it is well that the facts should be set right. This done, readers may +safely be left to judge what need there is for the apologetic tone in +connection with the name, the sayings, and doings of Parson Lot. + +My first meeting with him was in the autumn of 1848, at the house of Mr. +Maurice, who had lately been appointed Reader of Lincolns Inn. No parochial +work is attached to that post, so Mr. Maurice had undertaken the charge of +a small district in the parish in which he lived, and had set a number of +young men, chiefly students of the Inns of Court who had been attracted by +his teaching, to work in it. Once a week, on Monday evenings, they used +to meet at his house for tea, when their own work was reported upon and +talked over. Suggestions were made and plans considered; and afterwards a +chapter of the Bible was read and discussed. Friends and old pupils of Mr. +Maurice's, residing in the country, or in distant parts of London, were +in the habit of coming occasionally to these meetings, amongst whom was +Charles Kingsley. He had been recently appointed Rector of Eversley, and +was already well known as the author of _The Saint's Tragedy_, his first +work, which contained the germ of much that he did afterwards. + +His poem, and the high regard and admiration which Mr. Maurice had for +him, made him a notable figure in that small society, and his presence was +always eagerly looked for. What impressed me most about him when we first +met was, his affectionate deference to Mr. Maurice, and the vigour and +incisiveness of everything he said and did. He had the power of cutting +out what he meant in a few clear words, beyond any one I have ever met. +The next thing that struck one was the ease with which he could turn from +playfulness, or even broad humour, to the deepest earnest. At first I think +this startled most persons, until they came to find out the real deep +nature of the man; and that his broadest humour had its root in a faith +which realized, with extraordinary vividness, the fact that God's Spirit +is actively abroad in the world, and that Christ is in every man, and made +him hold fast, even in his saddest moments,--and sad moments were not +infrequent with him,--the assurance that, in spite of all appearances, the +world was going right, and would go right somehow, "Not your way, or my +way, but God's way." The contrast of his humility and audacity, of his +distrust in himself and confidence in himself, was one of those puzzles +which meet us daily in this world of paradox. But both qualities gave him a +peculiar power for the work he had to do at that time, with which the name +of Parson Lot is associated. + +It was at one of these gatherings, towards the end of 1847 or early in +1848, when Kingsley found himself in a minority of one, that he said +jokingly, he felt much as Lot must have felt in the Cities of the Plain, +when he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law. The name Parson Lot +was then and there suggested, and adopted by him, as a familiar _nom de +plume_, He used it from 1848 up to 1856; at first constantly, latterly +much more rarely. But the name was chiefly made famous by his writings in +"Politics for the People," the "Christian Socialist," and the "Journal of +Association," three periodicals which covered the years from '48 to '52; by +"Alton Locke"; and by tracts and pamphlets, of which the best known, "Cheap +Clothes and Nasty," is now republished. + +In order to understand and judge the sayings and writings of Parson Lot +fairly, it is necessary to recall the condition of the England of that +day. Through the winter of 1847-8, amidst wide-spread distress, the cloud +of discontent, of which Chartism was the most violent symptom, had been +growing darker and more menacing, while Ireland was only held down by main +force. The breaking-out of the revolution on the Continent in February +increased the danger. In March there were riots in London, Glasgow, +Edinburgh, Liverpool, and other large towns. On April 7th, "the Crown +and Government Security Bill," commonly called "the Gagging Act," was +introduced by the Government, the first reading carried by 265 to 24, +and the second a few days later by 452 to 35. On the 10th of April the +Government had to fill London with troops, and put the Duke of Wellington +in command, who barricaded the bridges and Downing Street, garrisoned the +Bank and other public buildings, and closed the Horse Guards. + +When the momentary crisis had passed, the old soldier declared in the House +of Lords that "no great society had ever suffered as London had during the +preceding days," while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief +magistrates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept +in London. In April, the Lord Chancellor, in introducing the Crown and +Government Security Bill in the House of Lords, referred to the fact +that "meetings were daily held, not only in London, but in most of the +manufacturing towns, the avowed object of which was to array the people +against the constituted authority of these realms." For months afterwards +the Chartist movement, though plainly subsiding, kept the Government in +constant anxiety; and again in June, the Bank, the Mint, the Custom House, +and other public offices were filled with troops, and the Houses of +Parliament were not only garrisoned but provisioned as if for a siege. + +From that time, all fear of serious danger passed away. The Chartists were +completely discouraged, and their leaders in prison; and the upper and +middle classes were recovering rapidly from the alarm which had converted +a million of them into special constables, and were beginning to doubt +whether the crisis had been so serious after all, whether the disaffection +had ever been more than skin deep. At this juncture a series of articles +appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ on "London Labour and the London Poor," +which startled the well-to-do classes out of their jubilant and scornful +attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair minded people +wonder, not that there had been violent speaking and some rioting, but that +the metropolis had escaped the scenes which had lately been enacted in +Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and other Continental capitals. + +It is only by an effort that one can now realize the strain to which the +nation was subjected during that winter and spring, and which, of course, +tried every individual man also, according to the depth and earnestness of +his political and social convictions and sympathies. The group of men who +were working under Mr. Maurice were no exceptions to the rule. The work of +teaching and visiting was not indeed neglected, but the larger questions +which were being so strenuously mooted--the points of the people's charter, +the right of public meeting, the attitude of the labouring-class to the +other classes--absorbed more and more of their attention. Kingsley was +very deeply impressed with the gravity and danger of the crisis--more so, +I think, than almost any of his friends; probably because, as a country +parson, he was more directly in contact with one class of the poor than any +of them. How deeply he felt for the agricultural poor, how faithfully he +reflected the passionate and restless sadness of the time, may be read in +the pages of "Yeast," which was then coming out in "Fraser." As the winter +months went on this sadness increased, and seriously affected his health. + +"I have a longing," he wrote to Mr. Ludlow, "to do _something_--what, God +only knows. You say, 'he that believeth will not make haste,' but I think +he that believeth must _make_ haste, or get damned with the rest. But I +will do anything that anybody likes--I have no confidence in myself or in +anything but God. I am not great enough for such times, alas! '_nè pour +faire des vers_,' as Camille Desmoulins said." + +This longing became so strong as the crisis in April approached, that he +came to London to see what could be done, and to get help from Mr. Maurice, +and those whom he had been used to meet at his house. He found them a +divided body. The majority were sworn in as special constables, and several +had openly sided with the Chartists; while he himself, with Mr. Maurice and +Mr. Ludlow, were unable to take active part with either side. The following +extract from a letter to his wife, written on the 9th of April, shows how +he was employed during these days, and how he found the work which he was +in search of, the first result of which was the publication of "those +'Politics for the People' which made no small noise in their times"-- + +"_April_ 11th, 1848.--The events of a week have been crowded into a few +hours. I was up till four this morning--writing posting placards, under +Maurice's auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the +rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns somewhere +to help these poor wretches to the truest alms?--to words, texts from the +Psalms, anything which may keep even one man from cutting his brother's +throat to-morrow or Friday? _Pray, pray, help us._ Maurice has given me +a highest proof of confidence. He has taken me to counsel, and we are to +have meetings for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are to +bring out a new set of real "Tracts for the Times," addressed to the higher +orders. Maurice is _à la hauteur des circonstances_--determined to make a +decisive move. He says, if the Oxford Tracts did wonders, why should not +we? Pray for us. A glorious future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow +seem to have driven away all my doubts and sorrow, and I see the blue sky +again, and my Father's face!" + +The arrangements for the publication of "Politics for the People" were soon +made; and in one of the earliest numbers, for May, 1848, appeared the paper +which furnishes what ground there is for the statement, already quoted, +that "he declared, in burning language, that the People's Charter did not +go far enough" It was No. 1 of "Parson Lot's Letters to the Chartists." Let +us read it with its context. + +"I am not one of those who laugh at your petition of the 10th of April: I +have no patience with those who do. Suppose there were but 250,000 honest +names on that sheet--suppose the Charter itself were all stuff--yet you +have still a right to fair play, a patient hearing, an honourable and +courteous answer, whichever way it may be. But _my only quarrel with the +Charter is that it does not go far enough in reform_. I want to see you +_free_, but I do not see that what you ask for will give you what you want. +I think you have fallen into just the same mistake as the rich, of whom you +complain--the very mistake which has been our curse and our nightmare. I +mean the mistake of fancying that _legislative_ reform is _social_ reform, +or that men's hearts can be changed by Act of Parliament. If any one will +tell me of a country where a Charter made the rogues honest, or the idle +industrious, I will alter my opinion of the Charter, but not till then. It +disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough, +but a poor, bald constitution-mongering cry as ever I heard. The French cry +of 'organization of labour' is worth a thousand of it, but yet that does +not go to the bottom of the matter by many a mile." And then, after telling +how he went to buy a number of the Chartist newspaper, and found it in a +shop which sold "flash songsters," "the Swell's Guide," and "dirty milksop +French novels," and that these publications, and a work called "The Devil's +Pulpit," were puffed in its columns, he goes on, "These are strange times. +I thought the devil used to befriend tyrants and oppressors, but he seems +to have profited by Burns' advice to 'tak a thought and mend.' I thought +the struggling freeman's watchword was: 'God sees my wrongs.' 'He hath +taken the matter into His own hands.' 'The poor committeth himself unto +Him, for He is the helper of the friendless.' But now the devil seems all +at once to have turned philanthropist and patriot, and to intend himself to +fight the good cause, against which he has been fighting ever since Adam's +time. I don't deny, my friends, it is much cheaper and pleasanter to be +reformed by the devil than by God; for God will only reform society on the +condition of our reforming every man his own self--while the devil is quite +ready to help us to mend the laws and the parliament, earth and heaven, +without ever starting such an impertinent and 'personal' request, as that +a man should mend himself. _That_ liberty of the subject he will always +respect."--"But I say honestly, whomsoever I may offend, the more I have +read of your convention speeches and newspaper articles, the more I am +convinced that too many of you are trying to do God's work with the devil's +tools. What is the use of brilliant language about peace, and the majesty +of order, and universal love, though it may all be printed in letters a +foot long, when it runs in the same train with ferocity, railing, mad, +one-eyed excitement, talking itself into a passion like a street woman? Do +you fancy that after a whole column spent in stirring men up to fury, a few +twaddling copybook headings about 'the sacred duty of order' will lay the +storm again? What spirit is there but the devil's spirit in bloodthirsty +threats of revenge?"--"I denounce the weapons which you have been deluded +into employing to gain you your rights, and the indecency and profligacy +which you are letting be mixed up with them! Will you strengthen and +justify your enemies? Will you disgust and cripple your friends? Will you +go out of your way to do wrong? When you can be free by fair means will you +try foul? When you might keep the name of Liberty as spotless as the Heaven +from which she comes, will you defile her with blasphemy, beastliness, and +blood? When the cause of the poor is the cause of Almighty God, will you +take it out of His hands to entrust it to the devil? These are bitter +questions, but as you answer them so will you prosper." + +In Letter II. he tells them that if they have followed, a different +"Reformer's Guide" from his, it is "mainly the fault of us parsons, who +have never told you that the true 'Reformer's Guide,' the true poor man's +book, the true 'Voice of God against tyrants, idlers, and humbugs, was the +Bible.' The Bible demands for the poor as much, and more, than they demand +for themselves; it expresses the deepest yearnings of the poor man's heart +far more nobly, more searchingly, more daringly, more eloquently than any +modern orator has done. I say, it gives a ray of hope--say rather a certain +dawn of a glorious future, such as no universal suffrage, free trade, +communism, organization of labour, or any other Morrison's-pill-measure can +give--and yet of a future, which will embrace all that is good in these--a +future of conscience, of justice, of freedom, when idlers and oppressors +shall no more dare to plead parchments and Acts of Parliament for their +iniquities. I say the Bible promises this, not in a few places only, but +throughout; it is the thought which runs through the whole Bible, justice +from God to those whom men oppress, glory from God to those whom men +despise. Does that look like the invention of tyrants, and prelates? You +may sneer, but give me a fair hearing, and if I do not prove my words, then +call me the same hard name which I shall call any man, who having read +the Bible, denies that it is the poor man's comfort and the rich man's +warning." + +In subsequent numbers (as afterwards in the "Christian Socialist," and the +"Journal of Association") he dwells in detail on the several popular cries, +such as, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," illustrating them from +the Bible, urging his readers to take it as the true Radical Reformer's +Guide, if they were longing for the same thing as he was longing for--to +see all humbug, idleness, injustice, swept out of England. His other +contributions to these periodicals consisted of some of his best short +poems: "The Day of the Lord;" "The Three Fishers;" "Old and New," and +others; of a series of Letters on the Frimley murder; of a short story +called "The Nun's Pool," and of some most charming articles on the pictures +in the National Gallery, and the collections in the British Museum, +intended to teach the English people how to use and enjoy their own +property. + +I think I know every line which was ever published under the signature +Parson Lot; and I take it upon myself to say, that there is in all that +"burning language" nothing more revolutionary than the extracts given above +from his letters to the Chartists. + +But, it may be said, apart from his writings, did not Parson Lot declare +himself a Chartist in a public meeting in London; and did he not preach in +a London pulpit a political sermon, which brought up the incumbent, who had +invited him, to protest from the altar against the doctrine which had just +been delivered? + +Yes! Both statements are true. Here are the facts as to the speech, those +as to the sermon I will give in their place. In the early summer of 1848 +some of those who felt with C. Kingsley that the "People's Charter" had not +had fair play or courteous treatment, and that those who signed it had real +wrongs to complain of, put themselves into communication with the leaders, +and met and talked with them. At last it seemed that the time was come for +some more public meeting, and one was called at the Cranbourn Tavern, over +which Mr. Maurice presided. After the president's address several very +bitter speeches followed, and a vehement attack was specially directed +against the Church and the clergy. The meeting waxed warm, and seemed +likely to come to no good, when Kingsley rose, folded his arms across his +chest, threw his head back, and began--with the stammer which always came +at first when he was much moved, but which fixed every one's attention at +once--"I am a Church of England parson"--a long pause--"and a Chartist;" +and then he went on to explain how far he thought them right in their claim +for a reform of Parliament; how deeply he sympathized with their sense of +the injustice of the law as it affected them; how ready he was to help in +all ways to get these things set right; and then to denounce their methods, +in very much the same terms as I have already quoted from his letters to +the Chartists. Probably no one who was present ever heard a speech which +told more at the time. I had a singular proof that the effect did not +pass away. The most violent speaker on that occasion was one of the staff +of the leading Chartist newspaper. I lost sight of him entirely for more +than twenty years, and saw him again, a little grey shrivelled man, by +Kingsley's side, at the grave of Mr. Maurice, in the cemetery at Hampstead. + +The experience of this meeting encouraged its promoters to continue the +series, which they did with a success which surprised no one more than +themselves. Kingsley's opinion of them may be gathered from the following +extract from a letter to his wife:-- + +"_June_ 4, 1848, Evening.--A few words before bed. I have just come home +from the meeting. No one spoke but working men, gentlemen I should call +them, in every sense of the term. Even _I_ was perfectly astonished by the +courtesy, the reverence to Maurice, who sat there like an Apollo, their +eloquence, the brilliant, nervous, well-chosen language, the deep simple +earnestness, the rightness and moderation of their thoughts. And these are +the _Chartists_, these are the men who are called fools and knaves--who are +refused the rights which are bestowed on every profligate fop.... It is +God's cause, fear not He will be with us, and if He is with us, who shall +be against us?" + +But while he was rapidly winning the confidence of the working classes, he +was raising up a host of more or less hostile critics in other quarters by +his writings in "Politics for the People," which journal was in the midst +of its brief and stormy career. At the end of June, 1848, he writes to Mr. +Ludlow, one of the editors-- + +"I fear my utterances have had a great deal to do with the 'Politics'' +unpopularity. I have got worse handled than any of you by poor and rich. +There is one comfort, that length of ears is in the donkey species always +compensated by toughness of hide. But it is a pleasing prospect for me (if +you knew all that has been said and written about Parson Lot), when I look +forward and know that my future explosions are likely to become more and +more obnoxious to the old gentlemen, who stuff their ears with cotton, and +then swear the children are not screaming." + +"Politics for the People" was discontinued for want of funds; but its +supporters, including all those who were working under Mr. Maurice--who, +however much they might differ in opinions, were of one mind as to the +danger of the time, and the duty of every man to do his utmost to meet that +danger--were bent upon making another effort. In the autumn, Mr. Ludlow, +and others of their number who spent the vacation abroad, came back with +accounts of the efforts at association which were being made by the +workpeople of Paris. + +The question of starting such associations in England as the best means +of fighting the slop system--which the "Chronicle" was showing to lie at +the root of the misery and distress which bred Chartists--was anxiously +debated. It was at last resolved to make the effort, and to identify the +new journal with the cause of Association, and to publish a set of tracts +in connection with it, of which Kingsley undertook to write the first, +"Cheap Clothes and Nasty." + +So "the Christian Socialist" was started, with Mr. Ludlow for editor, the +tracts on Christian Socialism begun under Mr. Maurice's supervision, and +the society for promoting working-men's associations was formed out of the +body of men who were already working with Mr. Maurice. The great majority +of these joined, though the name was too much for others. The question of +taking it had been much considered, and it was decided, on the whole, to be +best to do so boldly, even though it might cost valuable allies. Kingsley +was of course consulted on every point, though living now almost entirely +at Eversley, and his views as to the proper policy to be pursued may be +gathered best from the following extracts from letters of his to Mr. +Ludlow-- + +"We must touch the workman at all his points of interest. First and +foremost at association--but also at political rights, as grounded both +on the Christian ideal of the Church, and on the historic facts of the +Anglo-Saxon race. Then national education, sanitary and dwelling-house +reform, the free sale of land, and corresponding reform of the land laws, +moral improvement of the family relation, public places of recreation (on +which point I am very earnest), and I think a set of hints from history, +and sayings of great men, of which last I have been picking up from Plato, +Demosthenes, &c." + +1849.--"This is a puling, quill-driving, soft-handed age--among our +own rank, I mean. Cowardice is called meekness; to temporize is to be +charitable and reverent; to speak truth, and shame the devil, is to +offend weak brethren, who, somehow or other, never complain of their weak +consciences till you hit them hard. And yet, my dear fellow, I still remain +of my old mind--that it is better to say too much than too little, and more +merciful to knock a man down with a pick-axe than to prick him to death +with pins. The world says, No. It hates anything demonstrative, or violent +(except on its own side), or unrefined." + +1849.--"The question of property is one of these cases. We must face it in +this age--simply because it faces us."--"I want to commit myself--I want +to make others commit themselves. No man can fight the devil with a long +ladle, however pleasant it may be to eat with him with one. A man never +fishes well in the morning till he has tumbled into the water." + +And the counsels of Parson Lot had undoubtedly great weight in giving an +aggressive tone both to the paper and the society. But if he was largely +responsible for the fighting temper of the early movement, he, at any rate, +never shirked his share of the fighting. His name was the butt at which all +shafts were aimed. As Lot "seemed like one that mocked to his sons-in-law," +so seemed the Parson to the most opposite sections of the British nation. +As a friend wrote of him at the time, he "had at any rate escaped the +curse of the false prophets, 'Woe unto you when all men shall speak well +of you.'" Many of the attacks and criticisms were no doubt aimed not so +much at him personally as at the body of men with whom, and for whom, +he was working; but as he was (except Mr. Maurice) the only one whose +name was known, he got the lion's share of all the abuse. The storm +broke on him from all points of the compass at once. An old friend and +fellow-contributor to "Politics for the People," led the Conservative +attack, accusing him of unsettling the minds of the poor, making them +discontented, &c. Some of the foremost Chartists wrote virulently against +him for "attempting to justify the God of the Old Testament," who, they +maintained, was unjust and cruel, and, at any rate, not the God "of the +people." The political economists fell on him for his anti-Malthusian +belief, that the undeveloped fertility of the earth need not be overtaken +by population within any time which it concerned us to think about. The +quarterlies joined in the attack on his economic heresies. The "Daily +News" opened a cross fire on him from the common-sense Liberal battery, +denouncing the "revolutionary nonsense, which is termed Christian +Socialisms"; and, after some balancing, the "Guardian," representing in +the press the side of the Church to which he leant, turned upon him in a +very cruel article on the republication of "Yeast" (originally written +for "Fraser's Magazine"), and accused him of teaching heresy in doctrine, +and in morals "that a certain amount of youthful profligacy does no real +permanent harm to the character, perhaps strengthens it for a useful and +religious life." + +In this one instance Parson Lot fairly lost his temper, and answered, "as +was answered to the Jesuit of old--_mentiris impudentissime_." With the +rest he seemed to enjoy the conflict and "kept the ring," like a candidate +for the wrestling championship in his own county of Devon against all +comers, one down another come on. + +The fact is, that Charles Kingsley was born a fighting man, and believed +in bold attack. "No human power ever beat back a resolute forlorn hope," +he used to say; "to be got rid of, they must be blown back with grape and +canister," because the attacking party have all the universe behind them, +the defence only that small part which is shut up in their walls. And he +felt most strongly at this time that hard fighting was needed. "It is a +pity" he writes to Mr. Ludlow, "that telling people what's right, won't +make them do it; but not a new fact, though that ass the world has quite +forgotten it; and assures you that dear sweet 'incompris' mankind only +wants to be told the way to the millennium to walk willingly into it--which +is a lie. If you want to get mankind, if not to heaven, at least out of +hell, kick them out." And again, a little later on, in urging the policy +which the "Christian Socialist" should still follow-- + +1851.--"It seems to me that in such a time as this the only way to fight +against the devil is to attack him. He has got it too much his own way +to meddle with us if we don't meddle with him. But the very devil has +feelings, and if you prick him will roar...whereby you, at all events, gain +the not-every-day-of-the-week-to-be-attained benefit of finding out where +he is. Unless, indeed, as I suspect, the old rascal plays ventriloquist (as +big grasshoppers do when you chase them), and puts you on a wrong scent, +by crying 'Fire!' out of saints' windows. Still, the odds are if you prick +lustily enough, you make him roar unawares." + +The memorials of his many controversies lie about in the periodicals of +that time, and any one who cares to hunt them up will be well repaid, and +struck with the vigour of the defence, and still more with the complete +change in public opinion, which has brought the England of to-day clean +round to the side of Parson Lot. The most complete perhaps of his fugitive +pieces of this kind is the pamphlet, "Who are the friends of Order?" +published by J. W. Parker and Son, in answer to a very fair and moderate +article in "Fraser's Mazagine." The Parson there points out how he and +his friends were "cursed by demagogues as aristocrats, and by tories as +democrats, when in reality they were neither." And urges that the very fact +of the Continent being overrun with Communist fanatics is the best argument +for preaching association here. + +But though he faced his adversaries bravely, it must not be inferred that +he did not feel the attacks and misrepresentations very keenly. In many +respects, though housed in a strong and vigorous body, his spirit was an +exceedingly tender and sensitive one. I have often thought that at this +time his very sensitiveness drove him to say things more broadly and +incisively, because he was speaking as it were somewhat against the grain, +and knew that the line he was taking would be misunderstood, and would +displease and alarm those with whom he had most sympathy. For he was by +nature and education an aristocrat in the best sense of the word, believed +that a landed aristocracy was a blessing to the country, and that no +country would gain the highest liberty without such a class, holding its +own position firmly, but in sympathy with the people. He liked their habits +and ways, and keenly enjoyed their society. Again, he was full of reverence +for science and scientific men, and specially for political economy and +economists, and desired eagerly to stand well with them. And it was a most +bitter trial to him to find himself not only in sharp antagonism with +traders and employers of labour, which he looked for, but with these +classes also. + +On the other hand many of the views and habits of those with whom he found +himself associated were very distasteful to him. In a new social movement, +such as that of association as it took shape in 1849-50, there is certain +to be great attraction for restless and eccentric persons, and in point +of fact many such joined it. The beard movement was then in its infancy, +and any man except a dragoon who wore hair on his face was regarded as a +dangerous character, with whom it was compromising to be seen in any public +place--a person in sympathy with _sansculottes_, and who would dispense +with trousers but for his fear of the police. Now whenever Kingsley +attended a meeting of the promoters of association in London, he was +sure to find himself in the midst of bearded men, vegetarians, and other +eccentric persons, and the contact was very grievous to him. "As if we +shall not be abused enough," he used to say, "for what we must say and do +without being saddled with mischievous nonsense of this kind." To less +sensitive men the effect of eccentricity upon him was almost comic, as +when on one occasion he was quite upset and silenced by the appearance of +a bearded member of Council at an important deputation in a straw hat and +blue plush gloves. He did not recover from the depression produced by those +gloves for days. Many of the workmen, too, who were most prominent in the +Associations were almost as little to his mind--windy inflated kind of +persons, with a lot of fine phrases in their mouths which they did not know +the meaning of. + +But in spite of all that was distasteful to him in some of its +surroundings, the co-operative movement (as it is now called) entirely +approved itself to his conscience and judgment, and mastered him so that he +was ready to risk whatever had to be risked in fighting its battle. Often +in those days, seeing how loath Charles Kingsley was to take in hand, much +of the work which Parson Lot had to do, and how fearlessly and thoroughly +he did it after all, one was reminded of the old Jewish prophets, such as +Amos the herdsman of Tekoa--"I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's +son, but I was an herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit: and the Lord +took me as I followed the flock, and said unto me, Go prophesy unto my +people Israel." + +The following short extracts from his correspondence with Mr. Ludlow, as to +the conduct of the "Christian Socialist," and his own contributions to it, +may perhaps serve to show how his mind was working at this time:-- + +_Sept., 1850_.--"I cannot abide the notion of Branch Churches or Free +(sect) Churches, and unless my whole train of thought alters, I will resist +the temptation as coming from the devil. Where I am I am doing God's work, +and when the Church is ripe for more, the Head of the Church will put the +means our way. You seem to fancy that we may have a _Deus quidam Deceptor_ +over us after all. If I did I'd go and blow my dirty brains out and be rid +of the whole thing at once. I would indeed. If God, when people ask Him to +teach and guide them, does not; if when they confess themselves rogues and +fools to Him, and beg Him to make them honest and wise, He does not, but +darkens them, and deludes them into bogs and pitfalls, is he a Father? You +fall back into Judaism, friend." + +_Dec., 1850_.--"Jeremiah is my favourite book now. It has taught me more +than tongue can tell. But I am much disheartened, and am minded to speak +no more words in this name (Parson Lot); and yet all these bullyings teach +one, correct one, warn one--show one that God is not leaving one to go +one's own way. 'Christ reigns,' quoth Luther." + +It was at this time, in the winter of 1850, that "Alton Locke" was +published. He had been engaged on it for more than a year, working at it +in the midst of all his controversies. The following extracts from his +correspondence with Mr. Ludlow will tell readers more about it than any +criticism, if they have at all realized the time at which it was written, +or his peculiar work in that time. + +_February, 1849_.--"I have hopes from the book I am writing, which has +revealed itself to me so rapidly and methodically that I feel it comes +down from above, and that only my folly can spoil it, which I pray against +daily." + +1849.--"I think the notion a good one (referring to other work for the +paper which he had been asked to do), but I feel no inspiration at all +that way; and I dread being tempted to more and more bitterness, harsh +judgment, and evil speaking. I dread it. I am afraid sometimes I shall end +in universal snarling. Besides, my whole time is taken up with my book, +and _that_ I do feel inspired to write. But there is something else which +weighs awfully on my mind--(the first number of _Cooper's Journal_, which +he sent me the other day). Here is a man of immense influence openly +preaching Strausseanism to the workmen, and in a fair, honest, manly way +which must tell. Who will answer him? Who will answer Strauss? [Footnote: +He did the work himself. After many interviews, and a long correspondence +with him, Thomas Cooper changed his views, and has been lecturing and +preaching for many years as a Christian.] Who will denounce him as a vile +aristocrat, robbing the poor man of his Saviour--of the ground of all +democracy, all freedom, all association--of the Charter itself? _Oh, si +mihi centum voces et ferrea lingua!_ Think about _that_." + +_January, 1850_.--"A thousand thanks for your letter, though it only shows +me what I have long suspected, that I know hardly enough yet to make the +book what it should be. As you have made a hole, you must help to fill it. +Can you send me any publication which would give me a good notion of the +Independents' view of politics, also one which would give a good notion of +the Fox-Emerson-Strauss school of Blague-Unitarianism, which is superseding +dissent just now. It was with the ideal of Calvinism, and its ultimate +bearing on the people's cause, that I wished to deal. I believe that there +must be internecine war between the people's church--_i.e._, the future +development of Catholic Christianity, and Calvinism even in its mildest +form, whether in the Establishment or out of it--and I have counted the +cost and will give every _party_ its slap in their turn. But I will alter, +as far as I can, all you dislike." + +_August, 1850_.--"How do you know, dearest man, that I was not right in +making the Alton of the second volume different from the first? In showing +the individuality of the man swamped and warped by the routine of misery +and discontent? How do you know that the historic and human interest of the +book was not intended to end with Mackay's death, in whom old radicalism +dies, 'not having received the promises,' to make room for the radicalism +of the future? How do you know that the book from that point was not +intended to take a mythic and prophetic form, that those dreams come in for +the very purpose of taking the story off the ground of the actual into the +deeper and wider one of the ideal, and that they do actually do what they +were intended to do? How do you know that my idea of carrying out Eleanor's +sermons in practice were just what I could not--and if I could, dared not, +give? that all that I could do was to leave them as seed, to grow by itself +in many forms, in many minds, instead of embodying them in some action +which would have been both as narrow as my own idiosyncrasy, gain the +reproach of insanity, and be simply answered by--'If such things have been +done, where are they?' and lastly, how do you know that I had not a special +meaning in choosing a civilized fine lady as my missionary, one of a class +which, as it does exist, God must have something for it to do, and, as +it seems, plenty to do, from the fact that a few gentlemen whom I could +mention, not to speak of Fowell Buxtons, Howards, Ashleys, &c., have +done, more for the people in one year than they have done for themselves +in fifty? If I had made her an organizer, as well as a preacher, your +complaint might have been just. My dear man, the artist is a law unto +himself--or rather God is a law to him, when he prays, as I have earnestly +day after day about this book--to be taught how to say the right thing +in the right way--and I assure you I did not get tired of my work, but +laboured as earnestly at the end as I did at the beginning. The rest of +your criticism, especially about the interpenetration of doctrine and +action, is most true, and shall be attended to.--Your brother, + +"G. K." + +The next letter, on the same topic, in answer to criticisms on "Alton +Locke," is addressed to a brother clergyman-- + +"EVERSLEY, _January 13, 1851_. + +"Rec. dear Sir,--I will answer your most interesting letter as shortly as +I can, and if possible in the same spirit of honesty as that in which you +have written to me. + +"_First_, I do not think the cry 'Get on' to be anything but a devil's cry. +The moral of my book is that the working man who tries to get on, to desert +his class and rise above it, enters into a lie, and leaves God's path for +his own--with consequences. + +"_Second_, I believe that a man might be as a tailor or a costermonger, +every inch of him a saint, a scholar, and a gentleman, for I have seen some +few such already. I believe hundreds of thousands more would be so, if +their businesses were put on a Christian footing, and themselves given by +education, sanitary reforms, &c., the means of developing their own latent +capabilities--I think the cry, 'Rise in Life,' has been excited by the very +increasing impossibility of being anything but brutes while they struggle +below. I know well all that is doing in the way of education, &c., but +I do assert that the disease of degradation has been for the last forty +years increasing faster than the remedy. And I believe, from experience, +that when you put workmen into human dwellings, and give them a Christian +education, so far from wishing discontentedly to rise out of their class, +or to level others to it, exactly the opposite takes place. They become +sensible of the dignity of work, and they begin to see their labour as a +true calling in God's Church, now that it is cleared from the accidentia +which made it look, in their eyes, only a soulless drudgery in a devil's +workshop of a _World_. + +"_Third_, From the advertisement of an 'English Republic' you send, I can +guess who will be the writers in it, &c., &c., being behind the scenes. +It will come to nought. Everything of this kind is coming to nought now. +The workmen are tired of idols, ready and yearning for the Church and the +Gospel, and such men as your friend may laugh at Julian Harney, Feargus +O'Connor, and the rest of that smoke of the pit. Only we live in a great +crisis, and the Lord requires great things of us. The fields are white to +harvest. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He may send forth +labourers into His harvest. + +"_Fourth_, As to the capacities of working-men, I am afraid that your +excellent friend will find that he has only the refuse of working +intellects to form his induction on. The devil has got the best long ago. +By the neglect of the Church, by her dealing (like the Popish Church and +all weak churches) only with women, children, and beggars, the cream +and pith of working intellect is almost exclusively self-educated, and, +therefore, alas! infidel. If he goes on as he is doing, lecturing on +history, poetry, science, and all the things which the workmen crave for, +and can only get from such men as H----, Thomas Cooper, &c., mixed up with +Straussism and infidelity, he will find that he will draw back to his +Lord's fold, and to his lecture room, slowly, but surely, men, whose powers +will astonish him, as they have astonished me. + +"_Fifth_, The workmen whose quarrels you mention are not Christians, or +socialists either. They are of all creeds and none. We are teaching them +to become Christians by teaching them gradually that true socialism, true +liberty, brotherhood, and true equality (not the carnal dead level equality +of the Communist, but the spiritual equality of the church idea, which +gives every man an equal chance of developing and using God's gifts, and +rewards every man according to his work, without respect of persons) is +only to be found in loyalty and obedience to Christ. They do quarrel, but +if you knew how they used to quarrel before association, the improvement +since would astonish you. And the French associations do not quarrel +at all. I can send you a pamphlet on them, if you wish, written by an +eyewitness, a friend of mine. + +"_Sixth_, If your friend wishes to see what can be made of workmen's +brains, let him, in God's name, go down to Harrow Weald, and there see Mr. +Monro--see what he has done with his own national school boys. I have his +opinion as to the capabilities of those minds, which we, alas! now so sadly +neglect. I only ask him to go and ask of that man the question which you +have asked of me. + +"_Seventh_, May I, in reference to myself and certain attacks on me, say, +with all humility, that I do not speak from hearsay now, as has been +asserted, from second-hand picking and stealing out of those 'Reports on +Labour and the Poor,' in the 'Morning Chronicle,' which are now being +reprinted in a separate form, and which I entreat you to read if you wish +to get a clear view of the real state of the working classes. + +"From my cradle, as the son of an active clergyman, I have been brought +up in the most familiar intercourse with the poor in town and country. My +mother, a second Mrs. Fry, in spirit and act. For fourteen years my father +has been the rector of a very large metropolitan parish--and I speak what I +know, and testify that which I have seen. With earnest prayer, in fear and +trembling, I wrote my book, and I trust in Him to whom I prayed that He has +not left me to my own prejudices or idols on any important point relating +to the state of the possibilities of the poor for whom He died. Any use +which you choose you can make of this letter. If it should seem worth your +while to honour me with any further communications, I shall esteem them a +delight, and the careful consideration of them a duty.--Believe me, Rev. +and dear Sir, your faithful and obedient servant, + +"C. KINGSLEY." + +By this time the society for promoting associations was thoroughly +organized, and consisted of a council of promoters, of which Kingsley was a +member, and a central board, on which the managers of the associations and +a delegate from each of them sat. The council had published a number of +tracts, beginning with "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," which had attracted the +attention of many persons, including several of the London clergy, who +connected themselves more or less closely with the movement. Mr. Maurice, +Kingsley, Hansard, and others of these, were often asked to preach on +social questions, and when in 1851, on the opening of the Great Exhibition, +immense crowds of strangers were drawn to London, they were specially +in request. For many London incumbents threw open their churches, and +organized series of lectures, specially bearing on the great topic of the +day. It was now that the incident happened which once more brought upon +Kingsley the charge of being a revolutionist, and which gave him more pain +than all other attacks put together. One of the incumbents before referred +to begged Mr. Maurice to take part in his course of lectures, and to +ask Kingsley to do so; assuring Mr. Maurice that he "had been reading +Kingsley's works with the greatest interest, and earnestly desired to +secure him as one of his lecturers." "I promised to mention this request to +him," Mr. Maurice says, "though I knew he rarely came to London, and seldom +preached except in his own parish. He agreed, though at some inconvenience, +that he would preach a sermon on the 'Message of the Church to the +Labouring Man.' I suggested the subject to him. The incumbent intimated +the most cordial approval of it. He had asked us, not only with a previous +knowledge of our published writings, but expressly because he had that +knowledge. I pledge you my word that no questions were asked as to what we +were going to say, and no guarantees given. Mr. Kingsley took precisely +that view of the message of the Church to labouring men which every reader +of his books would have expected him to take." + +Kingsley took his text from Luke iv. verses 16 to 21: "The spirit of the +Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the +poor," &c. What then was that gospel? Kingsley asks, and goes on--"I assert +that the business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian +nation is, to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the fullest, +deepest, widest meaning of those three great words; that in as far as he so +does, he is a true priest, doing his Lord's work with his Lord's blessing +on him; that in as far as he does not he is no priest at all, but a traitor +to God and man"; and again, "I say that these words express the very +pith and marrow of a priest's business; I say that they preach freedom, +equality, and brotherhood to rich and poor for ever and ever." Then he goes +on to warn his hearers how there is always a counterfeit in this world of +the noblest message and teaching. + +Thus there are two freedoms--the false, where a man is free to do what he +likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought. + +Two equalities--the false, which reduces all intellects and all characters, +to a dead level, and gives the same power to the bad as to the good, to the +wise as to the foolish, ending thus in practice in the grossest inequality; +the true, wherein each man has equal power to educate and use whatever +faculties or talents God has given him, be they less or more. This is the +divine equality which the Church proclaims, and nothing else proclaims as +she does. + +Two brotherhoods--the false, where a man chooses who shall be his brothers, +and whom he will treat as such; the true, in which a man believes that +all are his brothers, not by the will of the flesh, or the will of man, +but by the will of God, whose children they all are alike. The Church has +three special possessions and treasures. The Bible, which proclaims man's +freedom, Baptism his equality, the Lord's Supper his brotherhood. + +At the end of this sermon (which would scarcely cause surprise to-day +if preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Chapel Royal), the +incumbent got up at the altar and declared his belief that great part of +the doctrine of the sermon was untrue, and that he had expected a sermon of +an entirely different kind. To a man of the preacher's vehement temperament +it must have required a great effort not to reply at the moment. The +congregation was keenly excited, and evidently expected him to do so. +He only bowed his head, pronounced the blessing, and came down from the +pulpit. + +I must go back a little to take up the thread of his connection with, and +work for, the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations. After it +had passed the first difficulties of starting, he was seldom able to +attend either Council or Central Board. Every one else felt how much more +important and difficult work he was doing by fighting the battle in the +press, down at Eversley, but he himself was eager to take part in the +everyday business, and uneasy if he was not well informed as to what was +going on. + +Sometimes, however, he would come up to the Council, when any matter +specially interesting to him was in question, as in the following example, +when a new member of the Council, an Eton master, had objected to some +strong expressions in one of his letters on the Frimley murder, in the +"Christian Socialist":-- + +1849.--"The upper classes are like a Yankee captain sitting on the safety +valve, and serenely whistling--but what will be will be. As for the worthy +Eton parson, I consider it infinitely expedient that he be entreated to +vent his whole dislike in the open Council forthwith, under a promise on my +part not to involve him in any controversy or reprisals, or to answer in +any tone except that of the utmost courtesy and respect. Pray do this. It +will at once be a means of gaining him, and a good example, please God, +to the working men; and for the Frimley letter, put it in the fire if you +like, or send it back to have the last half re-written, or 'anything else +you like, my pretty little dear.'" + +But his prevailing feeling was getting to be, that he was becoming an +outsider-- + +"Nobody deigns to tell me," he wrote to me, "how things go on, and who +helps, and whether I can help. In short, I know nothing, and begin to fancy +that you, like some others, think me a lukewarm and timeserving aristocrat, +after I have ventured more than many, because I had more to venture." + +The same feeling comes out in the following letter, which illustrates +too, very well, both his deepest conviction as to the work, the mixture +of playfulness and earnestness with which he handled it, and his humble +estimate of himself. It refers to the question of the admission of a new +association to the Union. It was necessary, of course, to see that the +rules of a society, applying for admission to the Union, were in proper +form, and that sufficient capital was forthcoming, and the decision lay +with the Central Board, controlled in some measure by the Council of +Promoters. + +An association of clay-pipe makers had applied for admission, and had been +refused by the vote of the central board. The Council, however, thought +there were grounds for reconsidering the decision, and to strengthen the +case for admission, Kingsley's opinion was asked. He replied:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _May 31, 1850_. + +"The sight of your handwriting comforted me--for nobody takes any notice of +me, not even the printers; so I revenge myself by being as idle as a dog, +and fishing, and gardening, and basking in this glorious sun. But your +letter set me thanking God that he has raised up men to do the work of +which I am not worthy. As for the pipe-makers, give my compliments to the +autocrats, and tell them it is a shame. The Vegetarians would have quite +as much right to refuse the Butchers, because, forsooth, theirs is now +discovered not to be a necessary trade. Bosh! The question is this--If +association be a great Divine law and duty, the realization of the Church +idea, no man has _a right_ to refuse any body of men, into whose heart +God has put it to come and associate. It may be answered that these men's +motives are self-interested. I say, 'Judge no man.' You dare not refuse +a heathen baptism because you choose to think that his only motive for +turning Christian is the selfish one of saving his own rascally soul. No +more have you a right to refuse to men an entrance into the social Church. +They must come in, and they will, because association is not men's dodge +and invention but God's law for mankind and society, which He has made, and +we must not limit. I don't know whether I am intelligible, but what's more +important, I know I am right. Just read this to the autocrats, and tell +them, with my compliments, they are Popes, Tyrants, Manichees, Ascetics, +Sectarians, and everything else that is abominable; and if they used as +many pipes as I do, they would know the blessing of getting them cheap, +and start an associate baccy factory besides. Shall we try? But, this one +little mistake excepted (though, if they repeat it, it will become a great +mistake, and a wrong, and a ruinous wrong), they are much better fellows +than poor I, and doing a great deal more good, and at every fresh news of +their deeds I feel like Job's horse, when he scents the battle afar off." + +No small part of the work of the Council consisted in mediating and +arbitrating in the disputes between the associates and their managers; +indeed, such work kept the legal members of the board (none of whom were +then overburdened with regular practice) pretty fully occupied. Some such +dispute had arisen in one of the most turbulent of these associations, and +had been referred to me for settlement. I had satisfied myself as to the +facts, and considered my award, and had just begun to write out the draft, +when I was called away from my chambers, and left the opening lines lying +on my desk. They ran as follows:--"The Trustees of the Mile End Association +of Engineers, seeing that the quarrels between the associates have not +ceased"--at which word I broke off. On returning to my chambers a quarter +of an hour later, I found a continuation in the following words:-- + + "And that every man is too much inclined to behave himself like a beast, + In spite of our glorious humanity, which requires neither God nor priest, + Yet is daily praised and plastered by ten thousand fools at least-- + Request Mr. Hughes' presence at their jawshop in the East, + Which don't they wish they may get it, for he goes out to-night to feast + At the Rev. C. Kingsley's rectory, Chelsea, where he'll get his gullet + greased + With the best of Barto Valle's port, and will have his joys increased + By meeting his old college chum, McDougal the Borneo priest-- + So come you thief, and drop your brief, + At six o'clock without relief; + And if you won't may you come to grief, + Says Parson Lot the Socialist Chief, + Who signs his mark at the foot of the leaf--thus" + +and, at the end, a clenched fist was sketched in a few bold lines, and +under it, "Parson Lot, his mark" written. + +I don't know that I can do better than give the history of the rest of the +day. Knowing his town habits well, I called at Parker, the publisher's, +after chambers, and found him there, sitting on a table and holding forth +on politics to our excellent little friend, John Wm. Parker, the junior +partner. + +We started to walk down to Chelsea, and a dense fog came on before we had +reached Hyde Park Corner. Both of us knew the way well; but we lost it half +a dozen times, and his spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened. "Isn't +this like life," he said, after one of our blunders: "a deep yellow fog all +round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way +on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again; +but you get home at last--there's always light enough for that." After a +short pause he said, quite abruptly, "Tom, do you want to live to be old?" +I said I had never thought on the subject; and he went on, "I dread it more +than I can say. To feel one's powers going, and to end in snuff and stink. +Look at the last days of Scott and Wordsworth, and Southey." I suggested +St. John. "Yes," he said, "that's the right thing, and will do for Bunsen, +and great, tranquil men like him. The longer they live the better for all. +But for an eager, fiery nature like mine, with fierce passions eating one's +life out, it won't do. If I live twenty years I know what will happen to +me. The back of my brain will soften, and I shall most likely go blind." + +The Bishop got down somehow by six. The dinner did not last long, for the +family were away, and afterwards we adjourned to the study, and Parson Lot +rose to his best. He stood before the fire, while the Bishop and I took the +two fireside arm chairs, and poured himself out, on subject after subject, +sometimes when much moved taking a tramp up and down the room, a long +clay pipe in his right hand (at which he gave an occasional suck; it was +generally out, but he scarcely noticed it), and his left hand passed behind +his back, clasping the right elbow. It was a favourite attitude with him, +when he was at ease with his company. + +We were both bent on drawing him out; and the first topic, I think, raised +by the Bishop was, Fronde's history, then recently published. He took up +the cudgels for Henry VIII., whom we accused of arbitrariness. Henry was +not arbitrary; arbitrary men are the most obstinate of men? Why? Because +they are weak. The strongest men are always ready to hear reason and change +their opinions, because the strong man knows that if he loses an opinion +to-day he can get just as good a one to-morrow in its place. But the weak +man holds on to his opinion, because he can't get another, and he knows it. + +Soon afterwards he got upon trout fishing, which was a strong bond of union +between him and me, and discoursed on the proper methods of fishing chalk +streams. "Your flies can't be too big, but they must be on small gut, not +on base viol fiddle strings, like those you brought down to Farnham last +year. I tell you gut is the thing that does it. Trout know that flies don't +go about with a ring and a hand pole through their noses, like so many +prize bulls of Lord Ducie's." + +Then he got on the possible effect of association on the future of England, +and from that to the first International Exhibition, and the building which +was going up in Hyde Park. + +"I mean to run a muck soon," he said, "against all this talk about genius +and high art, and the rest of it. It will be the ruin of us, as it has been +of Germany. They have been for fifty years finding out, and showing people +how to do everything in heaven and earth, and have done nothing. They are +dead even yet, and will be till they get out of the high art fit. We were +dead, and the French were dead till their revolution; but that brought us +to life. Why didn't the Germans come to life too? Because they set to work +with their arts, sciences, and how to do this, that, and the other thing, +and doing nothing. Goethe was, in great part, the ruin of Germany. He was +like a great fog coming down on the German people, and wrapping them up." + +Then he, in his turn, drew the Bishop about Borneo, and its people, and +fauna and flora; and we got some delightful stories of apes, and converts, +and honey bears, Kingsley showing himself, by his questions, as familiar +with the Bornean plants and birds, as though he had lived there. Later on +we got him on his own works, and he told us how he wrote. "I can't think, +even on scientific subjects, except in the dramatic form. It is what Tom +said to Harry, and what Harry answered him. I never put pen to paper till I +have two or three pages in my head, and see them as if they were printed. +Then I write them off, and take a turn in the garden, and so on again." We +wandered back to fishing, and I challenged his keenness for making a bag. +"Ah!" he said, "that's all owing to my blessed habit of intensity, which +has been my greatest help in life. I go at what I am about as if there were +nothing else in the world for the time being. That's the secret of all +hard-working men; but most of them can't carry it into their amusements. +Luckily for me I can stop from all work, at short notice, and turn head +over heels in the sight of all creation, and say, I won't be good or bad, +or wise, or anything, till two o'clock to-morrow." + +At last the Bishop would go, so we groped our way with him into the King's +Road, and left him in charge of a link-boy. When we got back, I said +something laughingly about his gift of talk, which had struck me more that +evening than ever before. + +"Yes," he said, "I have it all in me. I could be as great a talker as any +man in England, but for my stammering. I know it well; but it's a blessed +thing for me. You must know, by this time, that I'm a very shy man, and +shyness and vanity always go together. And so I think of what every fool +will say of me, and can't help it. When a man's first thought is not +whether a thing is right or wrong, but what will Lady A., or Mr. B. say +about it, depend upon it he wants a thorn in the flesh, like my stammer. +When I am speaking for God, in the pulpit, or praying by bedsides, I never +stammer. My stammer is a blessed thing for me. It keeps me from talking in +company, and from going out as much as I should do but for it." + +It was two o'clock before we thought of moving, and then, the fog being as +bad as ever, he insisted on making me up a bed on the floor. While we were +engaged in this process, he confided to me that he had heard of a doctor +who was very successful in curing stammering, and was going to try him. I +laughed, and reminded him of his thorn in the flesh, to which he replied, +with a quaint twinkle of his eye, "Well, that's true enough. But a man has +no right to be a nuisance, if he can help it, and no more right to go about +amongst his fellows stammering, than he has to go about stinking." + +At this time he was already at work on another novel; and, in answer to a +remonstrance from a friend, who was anxious that he should keep ail his +strength for social reform, writes-- + +1851.--"I know that He has made me a parish priest, and that that is the +duty which lies nearest me, and that I may seem to be leaving my calling +in novel writing. But has He not taught me all these very things _by my_ +parish priest life? Did He, too, let me become a strong, daring, sporting, +wild man of the woods for nothing? Surely the education He has given me so +different from that which authors generally receive, points out to me a +peculiar calling to preach on these points from my own experience, as it +did to good old Isaac Walton, as it has done in our own day to that truly +noble man, Captain Marryat. Therefore I must believe, '_si tu sequi la tua, +stella_,' with Dante, that He who ordained my star will not lead me _into_ +temptation, but _through_ it, as Maurice says. Without Him all places and +methods of life are equally dangerous--with Him, all equally safe. Pray for +me, for in myself I am weaker of purpose than a lost grey hound, lazier +than a dog in rainy weather." + +While the co-operative movement was spreading in all directions, the same +impulse was working amongst the trades unions, and the engineers had set +the example of uniting all their branches into one society. In this winter +they believed themselves strong enough to try conclusions with their +employers. The great lock-out in January, 1852, was the consequence. The +engineers had appealed to the Council of Promoters to help them in putting +their case--which had been much misrepresented--fairly before the public, +and Kingsley had been consulted as the person best able to do it. He had +declined to interfere, and wrote me the following letter to explain his +views. It will show how far he was an encourager of violent measures or +views:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _January 28, 1852_. + +"You may have been surprised at my having taken no part in this Amalgamated +Iron Trades' matter. And I think that I am bound to say why I have not, and +how far I wish my friends to interfere in it. + +"I do think that we, the Council of Promoters, shall not be wise in +interfering between masters and men; because--1. I question whether the +points at issue between them can be fairly understood by any persons not +conversant with the practical details of the trade... + +"2. Nor do I think they have put their case as well as they might. For +instance, if it be true that they themselves have invented many, or most, +of the improvements in their tools and machinery, they have an argument in +favour of keeping out unskilled labourers, which is unanswerable, and yet, +that they have never used--viz.: 'Your masters make hundreds and thousands +by these improvements, while we have no remuneration for this inventive +talent of ours, but rather lose by it, because it makes the introduction +of unskilled labour more easy. Therefore, the only way in which we can get +anything like a payment for this inventive faculty of which we make you a +present over and above our skilled labour, for which you bargained, is to +demand that we, who invent the machines, if we cannot have a share in the +profits of them, shall at least have the exclusive privilege of using them, +instead of their being, as now, turned against us.' That, I think, is a +fair argument; but I have seen nothing of it from any speaker or writer. + +"3. I think whatever battle is fought, must be fought by the men +themselves. The present dodge of the Manchester school is to cry out +against us, as Greg did. 'These Christian Socialists are a set of mediæval +parsons, who want to hinder the independence and self-help of the men, and +bring them back to absolute feudal maxims; and then, with the most absurd +inconsistency, when we get up a corporation workshop, to let the men work +on the very independence and self-help of which they talk so fine, they +turn round and raise just the opposite yell, and cry, The men can't be +independent of capitalists; these associations will fail _because_ the men +are helping themselves'--showing that what they mean is, that the men shall +be independent of every one but themselves--independent of legislators, +parsons, advisers, gentlemen, noblemen, and every one that tries to help +them by moral agents; but the slaves of the capitalists, bound to them by +a servitude increasing instead of lightening with their numbers. Now, the +only way in which we can clear the cause of this calumny is to let the men +fight their own battle; to prevent any one saying, 'These men are the tools +of dreamers and fanatics,' which would be just as ruinously blackening to +them in the public eyes, as it would be to let the cry get abroad, 'This is +a Socialist movement, destructive of rights of property, communism, Louis +Blanc and the devil, &c.' You know the infernal stuff which the devil gets +up on such occasions--having no scruples about calling himself hard names, +when it suits his purpose, to blind and frighten respectable old women. + +"Moreover, these men are not poor distressed needlewomen or slop-workers. +They are the most intelligent and best educated workmen, receiving incomes +often higher than a gentleman's son whose education has cost £1000, and if +they can't fight their own battles, no men in England can, and the people +are not ripe for association, and we must hark back into the competitive +rot heap again. All, then, that we can do is, to give advice when asked--to +see that they have, as far as we can get at them, a clear stage and no +favour, but not by public, but by private influence. + +"But we can help them in another way, by showing them the way to associate. +That is quite a distinct question from their quarrel with their masters, +and we shall be very foolish if we give the press a handle for mixing up +the two. We have a right to say to masters, men, and public, 'We know and +care nothing about the iron strike. Here are a body of men coming to us, +wishing to be shown how to do that which is a right thing for them to +do--well or ill off, strike or no strike, namely, associate; and we will +help and teach them to do _that_ to the very utmost of our power.' + +"The Iron Workers' co-operative shops will be watched with lynx eyes, +calumniated shamelessly. Our business will be to tell the truth about them, +and fight manfully with our pens for them. But we shall never be able to +get the ears of the respectabilities and the capitalists, if we appear at +this stage of the business. What we must say is, 'If you are needy and +enslaved, we will fight for you from pity, whether you be associated or +competitive. But you are neither needy, nor, unless you choose, enslaved; +and therefore we will only fight for you in proportion as you become +associates. Do that, and see if we can't stand hard knocks for your +sake.'--Yours ever affectionate, C. KINGSLEY." + +In the summer of 1852 (mainly by the continued exertions of the members of +the Council, who had supplied Mr. Slaney's committee with all his evidence, +and had worked hard in other ways for this object) a Bill for legalizing +Industrial Associations was about to be introduced into the House of +Commons. It was supposed at one time that it would be taken in hand by the +Government of Lord Derby, then lately come into office, and Kingsley had +been canvassing a number of persons to make sure of its passing. On hearing +that a Cabinet Minister would probably undertake it, he writes-- + +"Let him be assured that he will by such a move do more to carry out true +Conservatism, and to reconcile the workmen with the real aristocracy, than +any politician for the last twenty years has done. The truth is, we are in +a critical situation here in England. Not in one of danger--which is the +vulgar material notion of a crisis, but at the crucial point, the point of +departure of principles and parties which will hereafter become great and +powerful. Old Whiggery is dead, old true blue Toryism of the Robert Inglis +school is dead too-and in my eyes a great loss. But as live dogs are better +than dead lions, let us see what the live dogs are. + +"1.--The Peelites, who will ultimately, be sure, absorb into themselves all +the remains of Whiggery, and a very large proportion of the Conservative +party. In an effete unbelieving age, like this, the Sadducee and the +Herodian will be the most captivating philosopher. A scientific laziness, +lukewarmness, and compromise, is a cheery theory for the young men of +the day, and they will take to it _con amore_. I don't complain of Peel +himself. He was a great man, but his method of compromise, though useful +enough in particular cases when employed by a great man, becomes a most +dastardly "_schema mundi_" when taken up by a school of little men. +Therefore the only help which we can hope for from the Peelites is that +they will serve as ballast and cooling pump to both parties, but their very +trimming and moderation make them fearfully likely to obtain power. It +depends on the wisdom of the present government, whether they do or not. + +"2.--Next you have the Manchester school, from whom Heaven defend us; for +of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical, and anarchic and atheistic schemes +of the universe, the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst. I have no +language to express my contempt for it, and therefore I quote what Maurice +wrote me this morning. 'If the Ministry would have thrown Protection to +the dogs (as I trust they have, in spite of the base attempts of the Corn +Law Leaguers to goad them to committing themselves to it, and to hold them +up as the people's enemies), and thrown themselves into social measures, +who would not have clung to them, to avert that horrible catastrophe +of a Manchester ascendency, which I believe in my soul would be fatal +to intellect, morality, and freedom, and will be more likely to move a +rebellion among the working men than any Tory rule which can be conceived.' + +"Of course it would. To pretend to be the workmen's friends, by keeping +down the price of bread, when all they want thereby is to keep down wages, +and increase profits, and in the meantime to widen the gulf between the +working man and all that is time-honoured, refined, and chivalrous in +English society, that they may make the men their divided slaves, that +is-perhaps half unconsciously, for there are excellent men amongst +them--the game of the Manchester School." + +"I have never swerved from my one idea of the last seven years, that the +real battle of the time is, if England is to be saved from anarchy and +unbelief, and utter exhaustion caused by the competitive enslavement of +the masses, not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory--let the dead bury +their dead-but the Church, the gentlemen, and the workman, against the +shop-keepers and the Manchester School. The battle could not have been +fought forty years ago, because, on one side, the Church was an idle +phantasm, the gentleman too ignorant, the workman too merely animal; while, +on the other, the Manchester cotton-spinners were all Tories, and the +shopkeepers were a distinct class interest from theirs. But now these +two latter have united, and the sublime incarnation of shop-keeping and +labour-buying in the cheapest market shines forth in the person of Moses & +Son, and both cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say 'This is the man!'" and +join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our +true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the +present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them, +and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining +every nerve to keep off--a competitive United States, a democracy before +which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such +as you and I should wish to see, is impossible without a Church and a +Queen, and, as I believe, without a gentry. On the conduct of statesmen it +will depend whether we are gradually and harmoniously to develop England +on her ancient foundations, or whether we are to have fresh paralytic +governments succeeding each other in doing nothing, while the workmen and +the Manchester School fight out the real questions of the day in ignorance +and fury, till the '_culbute generale_' comes, and gentlemen of ancient +family, like your humble servant, betake themselves to Canada, to escape, +not the Amalgamated Engineers, but their 'masters,' and the slop-working +savages whom their masters' system has created, and will by that time have +multiplied tenfold. + +"I have got a Thames boat on the lake at Bramshill, and am enjoying +vigorous sculls. My answer to 'Fraser' is just coming out; spread it where +you can." + +In the next year or two the first excitement about the co-operative +movement cooled down. Parson Lot's pen was less needed, and he turned to +other work in his own name. Of the richness and variety of that work this +is not the place to speak, but it all bore on the great social problems +which had occupied him in the earlier years. The Crimean war weighed on +him like a nightmare, and modified some of his political opinions. On the +resignation of Lord Aberdeen's Government on the motion for inquiry into +the conduct of the war, he writes, February 5, 1855, "It is a very bad job, +and a very bad time, be sure, and with a laughing House of Commons we shall +go to Gehenna, even if we are not there already--But one comfort is, that +even Gehenna can burn nothing but the chaff and carcases, so we shall be +none the poorer in reality. So as the frost has broken gloriously, I wish +you would get me a couple of dozen of good flies, viz., cock a bondhues, +red palmers with plenty of gold twist; winged duns, with bodies of hare's +ear and yellow mohair mixed well; hackle duns with grey bodies, and a wee +silver, these last tied as palmers, and the silver ribbed all the way down. +If you could send them in a week I shall be very glad, as fishing begins +early." + +In the midst of the war he was present one day at a council meeting, after +which the manager of one of the associations referring to threatened bread +riots at Manchester, asked Kingsley's opinion as to what should be done. +"There never were but two ways," he said, "since the beginning of the world +of dealing with a corn famine. One is to let the merchants buy it up and +hold it as long as they can, as we do. And this answers the purpose best in +the long run, for they will be selling corn six months hence when we shall +want it more than we do now, and makes us provident against our wills. +The other is Joseph's plan." Here the manager broke in, "Why didn't our +Government step in then, and buy largely, and store in public granaries?" +"Yes," said Kingsley, "and why ain't you and I flying about with wings and +dewdrops hanging to our tails. Joseph's plan won't do for us. What minister +would we trust with money enough to buy corn for the people, or power to +buy where he chose." And he went on to give his questioner a lecture in +political economy, which the most orthodox opponent of the popular notions +about Socialism would have applauded to the echo. + +By the end of the year he had nearly finished "Westward Ho!"--the most +popular of his novels, which the war had literally wrung out of him. He +writes-- + +? "_December 18, 1855_. + +"I am getting more of a Government man every day. I don't see how they +could have done better in any matter, because I don't see but that _I_ +should have done a thousand times worse in their place, and that is the +only fair standard. + +"As for a ballad--oh! my dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is +burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious fellows, except 'God +save the Queen and them.' I tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot +sit down to make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it--or blundered with +hundred like Alfred Tennyson. He is no Tyrtæus, though he has a glimpse of +what Tyrtæus ought to be. But I have not even that; and am going rabbit +shooting to-morrow instead. But every man has his calling, and my novel +is mine, because I am fit for nothing better. The book" ('Westward Ho!') +"will be out the middle or end of January, if the printers choose. It is +a sanguinary book, but perhaps containing doctrine profitable for these +times. My only pain is that I have been forced to sketch poor Paddy as a +very worthless fellow then, while just now he is turning out a hero. I have +made the deliberate _amende honorable_ in a note." + +Then, referring to some criticism of mine on 'Westward Ho!'--"I suppose you +are right as to Amyas and his mother; I will see to it. You are probably +right too about John Hawkins. The letter in Purchas is to me unknown, +but your conception agrees with a picture my father says he has seen of +Captain John (he thinks at Lord Anglesey's, at Beaudesert) as a prim, hard, +terrier-faced, little fellow, with a sharp chin, and a dogged Puritan eye. +So perhaps I am wrong: but I don't think _that_ very important, for there +must have been sea-dogs of my stamp in plenty too." Then, referring to the +Crimean war--"I don't say that the two cases are parallel. I don't ask +England to hate Russia as she was bound to hate Spain, as God's enemy; but +I do think that a little Tudor pluck and Tudor democracy (paradoxical as +the word may seem, and inconsistently as it was carried out then) is just +what we want now." + +"Tummas! Have you read the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, in Stanley's +'Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old Wordsworth would have writ +thereon! If I didn't cry like a babby over it. What a brick of a horse he +must have been, and what a brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must +have been, to have his commandments keeped unto this day concerning of his +horse; and no one to know who he was, nor when, nor how, nor nothing. I +wonder if anybody'll keep _our_ commandments after we be gone, much less +say, 'Eat, eat, O horse of Abou Kingsley!'" + +By this time the success of "Westward Ho!" and "Hypatia" had placed him in +the first rank of English writers. His fame as an author, and his character +as a man, had gained him a position which might well have turned any man's +head. There were those amongst his intimate friends who feared that it +might be so with him, and who were faithful enough to tell him so. And I +cannot conclude this sketch better than by giving his answer to that one +of them with whom he had been most closely associated in the time when, as +Parson Lot, every man's hand had been against him-- + +"MY DEAR LUDLOW, + +"And for this fame, &c., + +"I know a little of her worth. + +"And I will tell you what I know, + +"That, in the first place, she is a fact, and as such, it is not wise to +ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well +as her front. + +"The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of +praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty; +Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is +it flesh or spirit? a difficult question; because tamed animals grow to +possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysician does not yet allow +them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when +misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between +good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of +every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest +filial and family affections, as the earliest mainspring of good actions? +Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary +lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the +praise of God alone is to be sought? Or are we to believe that the child is +intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful +fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use +his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise +of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter? I should say that the +last was the more reasonable. And this I will say, that if you bring up +any child to care nothing for the praise of its parents, its elders, its +pastors, and masters, you may make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic: +but you will neither make it a man, an Englishman, or a Christian. + +"But 'our Lord's words stand, about not seeking the honour which comes from +men, but the honour which comes from God only!' True, they do stand, and +our Lord's fact stands also, the fact that He has created every child to +be educated by an honour which comes from his parents and elders. Both are +true. Here, as in most spiritual things, you have an antinomia, an apparent +contradiction, which nothing but the Gospel solves. And it does solve it; +and your one-sided view of the text resolves itself into just the same +fallacy as the old ascetic one. 'We must love God alone, therefore we must +love no created thing.' To which St. John answers pertinently 'He who +loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath +not seen?' If you love your brethren, you love Christ in them. If you love +their praise, you love the praise of Christ in them. For consider this, +you cannot deny that, if one loves any person, one desires that person's +esteem. But we are bound to love all men, and that is our highest state. +Therefore, in our highest state, we shall desire all men's esteem. +Paradoxical, but true. If we believe in Christmas-day; if we believe in +Whitsunday, we shall believe that Christ is in all men, that God's spirit +is abroad in the earth, and therefore the dispraise, misunderstanding, and +calumny of men will be exquisitely painful to us, and ought to be so; and, +on the other hand, the esteem of men, and renown among men for doing good +deeds will be inexpressibly precious to us. They will be signs and warrants +to us that God is pleased with us, that we are sharing in that 'honour and +glory' which Paul promises again and again, with no such scruples as yours, +to those who lead heroic lives. We shall not neglect the voice of God +within us; but we shall remember that there is also a voice of God without +us, which we must listen to; and that in a Christian land, _vox populi_, +patiently and discriminately listened to, is sure to be found not far off +from the _vox Dei_. + +"Now, let me seriously urge this last fact on you. Of course, in listening +to the voice of the man outside there is a danger, as there is in the use +of any faculty. You may employ it, according to Divine reason and grace, +for ennobling and righteous purposes; or you may degrade it to carnal and +selfish ones; so you may degrade the love of praise into vanity, into +longing for the honour which comes from men, by pandering to their passions +and opinions, by using your powers as they would too often like to use +theirs, for mere self-aggrandisement, by saying in your heart--_quam +pulchrum digito monstrari el diceri hic est_. That is the man who wrote the +fine poem, who painted the fine picture, and so forth, till, by giving way +to this, a man may give way to forms of vanity as base as the red Indian +who sticks a fox's tail on, and dances about boasting of his brute cunning. +I know all about that, as well as any poor son of Adam ever did. But I +know, too, that to desire the esteem of as many rational men as possible; +in a word, to desire an honourable, and true renown for having done good +in my generation, has nothing to do with that; and the more I fear and +struggle against the former, the more I see the exceeding beauty and +divineness, and everlasting glory of the latter as an entrance into the +communion of saints. + +"Of course, all this depends on whether we do believe that Christ is in +every man, and that God's spirit is abroad in the earth. Of course, again, +it will be very difficult to know who speaks by God's spirit, and who +sees by Christ's light in him; but surely the wiser, the humbler path, is +to give men credit for as much wisdom and rightness as possible, and to +believe that when one is found fault with, one is probably in the wrong. +For myself, on Looking back, I see clearly with shame and sorrow, that the +obloquy which I have brought often on myself and on the good cause, has +been almost all of it my own fault--that I have given the devil and bad +men a handle, not by caring what people would say, but by _not caring_--by +fancying that I was a very grand fellow, who was going to speak what I knew +to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), +while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at +the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean +the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for +other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience +and wisdom on points which I had never considered--which took a pride in +shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting as hard as I could, and +fancied, blasphemously, as I think, that the word of God had come to me +only, and went out from me only. God forgive me for these sins, as well +as for my sins in the opposite direction; but for these sins especially, +because I see them to be darker and more dangerous than the others. + +"For there has been gradually revealed to me (what my many readings in the +lives of fanatics and ascetics ought to have taught me long before), that +there is a terrible gulf ahead of that not caring what men say. Of course +it is a feeling on which the spirit must fall back in hours of need, and +cry, 'Thou, God, knowest mine integrity. I have believed, and therefore I +will speak; thou art true, though all men be liars!' But I am convinced +that that is a frame in which no man can live, or is meant to live; +that it is only to be resorted to in fear and trembling, after deepest +self-examination, and self-purification, and earnest prayer. For otherwise, +Ludlow, a man gets to forget that voice of God without him, in his +determination to listen to nothing but the voice of God within him, and so +he falls into two dangers. He forgets that there is a voice of God without +him. He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men; +he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise +prophesyings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. + +"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own +conscience and _schema mundi_, he loses the opportunity of correcting his +impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God +without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very +flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God, +and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs +eclecticism, absence of tenderness _for_ men, for want of sympathy _with_ +men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his +own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and +if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. +This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged +Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die +rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with +James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and +Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many +pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, +have used both as instruments of their fanaticism. + +"Against this I have to guard myself, you little know how much, and to +guard my children still more, brought up, as they will be, under a father, +who, deeply discontented with the present generation, cannot but express +that discontent at times. To make my children '_banausoi_,' insolent and +scoffing radicals, believing in nobody and nothing but themselves, would be +perfectly easy in me if I were to make the watchword of my house, 'Never +mind what people say.' On the contrary, I shall teach them that there are +plenty of good people in the world; that public opinion has pretty surely +an undercurrent of the water of life, below all its froth and garbage; +and that in a Christian country like this, where, with all faults, a man +(sooner or later) has fair play and a fair hearing, the esteem of good men, +and the blessings of the poor, will be a pretty sure sign that they have +the blessing of God also; and I shall tell them, when they grow older, that +ere they feel called on to become martyrs, in defending the light within +them against all the world, they must first have taken care most patiently, +and with all self-distrust and humility, to make full use of the light +which is around them, and has been here for ages before them, and would be +here still, though they had never been born or thought of. The antinomy +between this and their own conscience may be painful enough to them some +day. To what thinking man is it not a life-long battle? but I shall not +dream that by denying one pole of the antinomy I can solve it, or do +anything but make them, by cynicism or fanaticism, bury their talent in the +earth, and _not_ do the work which God has given them to do, because they +will act like a parson who, before beginning his sermon, should first kick +his congregation out of doors, and turn the key; and not like St. Paul, who +became all things to all men, if by any means he might save some. + +"Yours ever affectionately, with all Christmas blessings, + +"C. KINGSLEY. + +"FARLY COURT, _December 26, 1855_. + +"I should be very much obliged to you to show this letter to Maurice." + +One more letter only I will add, dated about the end of the "Parson Lot" +period. He had written to inform me that one of the old Chartist leaders, +a very worthy fellow, was in great distress, and to ask me to do what I +could for him. In my reply I had alluded somewhat bitterly to the apparent +failure of the Association movement in London, and to some of our blunders, +acknowledging how he had often seen the weak places, and warned us against +them. His answer came by return of post:-- + +"EVERSLEY, _May, 1856_. + +"DEAR TOM,--It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest; and don't cry +stinking fish, neither don't hollow till you're out of the wood--which you +oughtn't to have called yourself Tom fool, and blasphemed the holy name +thereby, till you knowed you was sich, which you wasn't, as appears by +particulars. And I have heard from T---- twice to-day, and he is agreeable, +which, if he wasn't, he is an ass, and don't know half a loaf is better +than no bread, and you musn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but all is as +right as a dog-fox down wind and vi. _millia passuum_, to the next gorse. +But this £25 of his is a grueller, and I learnt with interest that you are +inclined to get the fishes nose out of the weed. I have offered to lend him +£10--hopes it may be lending--and have written a desperate begging letter +to R. Monckton Milnes, Esq., which 'evins prosper. Poor T---- says to-night +that he has written to Forster about it--which he must have the small of +his back very hard against the ropes so to do, so the sooner we get the +ginger-beer bottle out the longer he'll fight, or else he'll throw up the +sponge at once; for I know his pride. I think we can raise it somehow. I +have a last card in old ----, the judge who tried and condemned him, and is +the dearest old soul alive, only he will have it T---- showed dunghill, and +don't carry a real game nackle. If I am to tackle he you must send me back +those letters to appeal to his piety and 'joys as does abound,' as your +incomparable father remarks. When _will_ you give me that canticle? He +says Tom Taylor (I believe all the world is called Thomas) has behaved to +him like a brother, which, indeed, was to be expexed, and has promised +him copying at a shilling an hour, and _will_ give him a chop daily free +gracious; but the landlord won't wait, which we musn't neither. + +"Now, business afore pleasure. You are an old darling, and who says no, +I'd kick him, if it warn't for my cloth; but you are green in cottoning to +me about our '48 mess. Because why? I lost nothing--I risked nothing. You +fellows worked like bricks, spent money, and got midshipman's half-pay +(nothing a-day and find yourself), and monkey's allowance (more kicks than +halfpence). I risked no money; 'cause why, I had none; but _made_ money out +of the movement, and fame too. I've often thought what a dirty beast I was. +I made £150 by Alton Locke, and never lost a farthing; and I got, not in +spite of, but by the rows, a name and a standing with many a one who would +never have heard of me otherwise, and I should have been a stercoraceous +mendicant if I had hollowed when I got a facer, while I was winning by the +cross, though I didn't mean to fight one. No. And if I'd had £100,000, I'd +have, and should have, staked and lost it all in 1848-50. I should, Tom, +for my heart was and is in it, and you'll see it will beat yet; but we +ain't the boys. We don't see but half the bull's eye yet, and don't see +_at all_ the policeman which is a going on his beat behind the bull's eye, +and no thanks to us. Still, _some_ somedever, it's in the fates, that +Association is the pure caseine, and must be eaten by the human race if it +would save its soul alive, which, indeed, it will; only don't you think me +a good fellow for not crying out, when I never had more to do than scratch +myself and away went the fleas. But you all were real bricks; and if you +were riled, why let him that is without sin cast the first stone, or let me +cast it for him, and see if I don't hit him in the eye. + +"Now to business; I have had a sortér kindèr sample day. Up at 5, to see a +dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who +came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from +5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony--insensible to me, but +not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again to him at +8. Found him insensible to his own pain, with dilated pupils, dying of +pressure of the brain--going any moment. Prayed the commendatory prayers +over him, and started for the river with West. Fished all the morning +in a roaring N.E. gale, with the dreadful agonized face between me and +the river, pondering on THE mystery. Killed eight on 'March brown' and +'governor,' by drowning the flies, and taking _'em out gently to see_ if +ought was there--which is the only dodge in a north-easter. 'Cause why? The +water is warmer than the air--_ergo_, fishes don't like to put their noses +out o' doors, and feeds at home down stairs. It is the only wrinkle, Tom. +The captain fished a-top, and caught but three all day. They weren't going +to catch a cold in their heads to please him or any man. Clouds burn up at +1 P.M. I put on a minnow, and kill three more; I should have had lots, but +for the image of the dirty hickory stick, which would 'walk the waters like +a thing of life,' just ahead of my minnow. Mem.--Never fish with the sun in +your back; it's bad enough with a fly, but with a minnow it's strichnine +and prussic acid. My eleven weighed together four and a-half pounds--three +to the pound; not good, considering I had spased many a two-pound fish, I +_know_. + +"Corollary.--Brass minnow don't suit the water. Where is your wonderful +minnow? Send him me down, or else a _horn_ one, which I believes in +desperate; but send me something before Tuesday, and I will send you P.O.O. +Horn minnow looks like a gudgeon, which is the pure caseine. One pounder I +caught to-day on the 'March brown' womited his wittles, which was rude, but +instructive; and among worms was a gudgeon three inches long and more. Blow +minnows--gudgeon is the thing. + +"Came off the water at 3. Found my man alive, and, thank God, quiet. Sat +with him, and thought him going once or twice. What a mystery that long, +insensible death-struggle is! Why should they be so long about it? Then had +to go Hartley Row for an Archdeacon's Sunday-school meeting--three hours +useless (I fear) speechifying and 'shop'; but the Archdeacon is a good +man, and works like a brick beyond his office. Got back at 10:30, and sit +writing to you. So goes one's day. All manner of incongruous things to +do--and the very incongruity keeps one beany and jolly. Your letter was +delightful. I read part of it to West, who says, you are the best fellow on +earth, to which I agree. + +"So no more from your sleepy and tired--C. KINGSLEY." + +This was almost the last letter I ever received from him in the Parson Lot +period of his life, with which alone this notice has to do. It shows, I +think, very clearly that it was not that he had deserted his flag (as has +been said) or changed his mind about the cause for which he had fought so +hard and so well. His heart was in it still as warmly as ever, as he says +himself. But the battle had rolled away to another part of the field. +Almost all that Parson Lot had ever striven for was already gained. The +working-classes had already got statutory protection for their trade +associations, and their unions, though still outside the law, had become +strong enough to fight their own battles. And so he laid aside his fighting +name and his fighting pen, and had leisure to look calmly on the great +struggle more as a spectator than an actor. + +A few months later, in the summer of 1856, when he and I were talking +over and preparing for a week's fishing in the streams and lakes of his +favourite Snowdonia, he spoke long and earnestly in the same key. I well +remember how he wound it all up with, "the long and short of it is, I am +becoming an optimist. All men, worth anything, old men especially, have +strong fits of optimism--even Carlyle has--because they can't help hoping, +and sometimes feeling, that the world is going right, and will go right, +not your way, or my way, but its own way. Yes; we've all tried our +Holloway's Pills, Tom, to cure all the ills of all the world--and we've +all found out I hope by this time that the tough old world has more in +its inside than any Holloway's Pills will clear out." A few weeks later I +received the following invitation to Snowdon, and to Snowdon we went in the +autumn of 1856. + +THE INVITATION. + + Come away with me, Tom, + Term and talk is done; + My poor lads are reaping, + Busy every one. + Curates mind the parish, + Sweepers mind the Court, + We'll away to Snowdon + For our ten days' sport, + Fish the August evening + Till the eve is past, + Whoop like boys at pounders + Fairly played and grassed. + When they cease to dimple, + Lunge, and swerve, and leap, + Then up over Siabod + Choose our nest, and sleep. + Up a thousand feet, Tom, + Round the lion's head, + Find soft stones to leeward + And make up our bed. + Bat our bread and bacon, + Smoke the pipe of peace, + And, ere we be drowsy, + Give our boots a grease. + Homer's heroes did so, + Why not such as we? + What are sheets and servants? + Superfluity. + Pray for wives and children + Safe in slumber curled, + Then to chat till midnight + O'er this babbling world. + Of the workmen's college, + Of the price of grain, + Of the tree of knowledge, + Of the chance of rain; + If Sir A. goes Romeward, + If Miss B. sings true, + If the fleet comes homeward, + If the mare will do,-- + Anything and everything-- + Up there in the sky + Angels understand us, + And no "_saints_" are by. + Down, and bathe at day-dawn, + Tramp from lake to lake, + Washing brain and heart clean + Every step we take. + Leave to Robert Browning + Beggars, fleas, and vines; + Leave to mournful Ruskin + Popish Apennines, + Dirty Stones of Venice + And his Gas-lamps Seven; + We've the stones of Snowdon + And the lamps of heaven. + Where's the mighty credit + In admiring Alps? + Any goose sees "glory" + In their "snowy scalps." + Leave such signs and wonders + For the dullard brain, + As æsthetic brandy, + Opium, and cayenne; + Give me Bramshill common + (St. John's harriers by), + Or the vale of Windsor, + England's golden eye. + Show me life and progress, + Beauty, health, and man; + Houses fair, trim gardens, + Turn where'er I can. + Or, if bored with "High Art," + And such popish stuff, + One's poor ears need airing, + Snowdon's high enough. + While we find God's signet + Fresh on English ground, + Why go gallivanting + With the nations round? + Though we try no ventures + Desperate or strange; + Feed on common-places + In a narrow range; + Never sought for Franklin + Round the frozen Capes; + Even, with Macdougall, + Bagged our brace of apes; + Never had our chance, Tom, + In that black Redan; + Can't avenge poor Brereton + Out in Sakarran; + Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, + By the dirty pen, + What we can we will be, + Honest Englishmen. + Do the work that's nearest, + Though it's dull at whiles; + Helping, when we meet them + Lame dogs over stiles; + See in every hedgerow + Marks of angels' feet, + Epics in each pebble + Underneath our feet; + Once a-year, like schoolboys, + Robin-Hooding go. + Leaving fops and fogies + A thousand feet below. + +T. H. + + + + +CHEAP CLOTHES AND NASTY. + + +King Ryence, says the legend of Prince Arthur, wore a paletot trimmed with +kings' beards. In the first French Revolution (so Carlyle assures us) +there were at Meudon tanneries of human skins. Mammon, at once tyrant and +revolutionary, follows both these noble examples--in a more respectable +way, doubtless, for Mammon hates cruelty; bodily pain is his devil--the +worst evil of which he, in his effeminacy, can conceive. So he shrieks +benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged; but he trims his +paletots, and adorns his legs, with the flesh of men and the skins of +women, with degradation, pestilence, heathendom, and despair; and then +chuckles self-complacently over the smallness of his tailors' bills. +Hypocrite!--straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! What is flogging, +or hanging, King Ryence's paletot, or the tanneries of Meudon, to the +slavery, starvation, waste of life, year-long imprisonment in dungeons +narrower and fouler than those of the Inquisition, which goes on among +thousands of free English clothes-makers at this day? + +"The man is mad," says Mammon, smiling supercilious pity. Yes, Mammon; mad +as Paul before Festus; and for much the same reason, too. Much learning has +made us mad. From two articles in the "Morning Chronicle" of Friday, Dec. +14th, and Tuesday, Dec. 18th, on the Condition of the Working Tailors, +we learnt too much to leave us altogether masters of ourselves. But there +is method in our madness; we can give reasons for it--satisfactory to +ourselves, perhaps also to Him who made us, and you, and all tailors +likewise. Will you, freshly bedizened, you and your footmen, from +Nebuchadnezzar and Co.'s "Emporium of Fashion," hear a little about how +your finery is made? You are always calling out for facts, and have a firm +belief in salvation by statistics. Listen to a few. + +The Metropolitan Commissioner of the "Morning Chronicle" called two +meetings of the Working Tailors, one in Shad well, and the other at the +Hanover Square Rooms, in order to ascertain their condition from their +own lips. Both meetings were crowded. At the Hanover Square Rooms there +were more than one thousand men; they were altogether unanimous in their +descriptions of the misery and slavery which they endured. It appears +that there are two distinct tailor trades--the "honourable" trade, now +almost confined to the West End, and rapidly dying out there, and the +"dishonourable" trade of the show-shops and slop-shops--the plate-glass +palaces, where gents--and, alas! those who would be indignant at that +name--buy their cheap-and-nasty clothes. The two names are the tailors' +own slang; slang is true and expressive enough, though, now and then. The +honourable shops in the West End number only sixty; the dishonourable, four +hundred and more; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all +its own way. The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of +one hundred and fifty journeymen per year; the dishonourable increasing at +such a rate that, in twenty years it will have absorbed the whole tailoring +trade, which employs upwards of twenty-one thousand journeymen. At the +honourable shops the work is done, as it was universally thirty years ago, +on the premises and at good wages. In the dishonourable trade, the work is +taken home by the men, to be done at the very lowest possible prices, which +decrease year by year, almost month by month. At the honourable shops, from +36s. to 24s. is paid for a piece of work for which the dishonourable shop +pays from 22s. to 9s. But not to the workmen; happy is he if he really +gets two-thirds, or half of that. For at the honourable shops, the master +deals directly with his workmen; while at the dishonourable ones, the +greater part of the work, if not the whole, is let out to contractors, or +middle-men--"_sweaters_," as their victims significantly call them--who, in +their turn, let it out again, sometimes to the workmen, sometimes to fresh +middlemen; so that out of the price paid for labour on each article, not +only the workmen, but the sweater, and perhaps the sweater's sweater, and a +third, and a fourth, and a fifth, have to draw their profit. And when the +labour price has been already beaten down to the lowest possible, how much +remains for the workmen after all these deductions, let the poor fellows +themselves say! + +One working tailor (at the Hanover Square Rooms Meeting) "mentioned a +number of shops, both at the east and west ends, whose work was all +taken by sweaters; and several of these shops were under royal and noble +patronage. There was one notorious sweater who kept his carriage. He was a +Jew, and, of course, he gave a preference to his own sect. Thus, another +Jew received it from him second hand and at a lower rate; then it went to a +third-till it came to the unfortunate Christian at perhaps the eighth rate, +and he performed the work at barely living prices; this same Jew required a +deposit of 5_l_. in money before he would give out a single garment to be +made. He need not describe the misery which this system entailed upon the +workmen. It was well known, but it was almost impossible, except for those +who had been at the two, to form an idea of the difference between the +present meeting and one at the East-end, where all who attended worked for +slop-shops and sweaters. The present was a highly respectable assembly; the +other presented no other appearance but those of misery and degradation." + +Another says--"We have all worked in the honourable trade, so we know the +regular prices from our own personal experience. Taking the bad work with +the good work we might earn 11s. a week upon an average. Sometimes we do +earn as much as 15s.; but, to do this, we are obliged to take part of our +work home to our wives and daughters. We are not always fully employed. We +are nearly half our time idle. Hence, our earnings are, upon an average +throughout the year, not more than 5s. 6d. a week." "Very often I have made +only 3s. 4d. in the week," said one. "That's common enough with us all, I +can assure you," said another. "Last week my wages was 7s. 6d.," declared +one. "I earned 6s. 4d.," exclaimed the second. "My wages came to 9s. 2d. +The week before I got 6s. 3d." "I made 7s. 9d.," and "I 7s. or 8s., I can't +exactly remember which." "This is what we term the best part of our winter +season. The reason why we are so long idle is because more hands than +are wanted are kept on the premises, so that in case of a press of work +coming in, our employers can have it done immediately. Under the day work +system no master tailor had more men on the premises than he could keep +continually going; but since the change to the piecework system, masters +made a practice of engaging double the quantity of hands that they +have any need for, so that an order may be executed 'at the shortest +possible notice,' if requisite. A man must not leave the premises when, +unemployed,--if he does, he loses his chance of work coming in. I have been +there four days together, and had not a stitch of work to do." "Yes; that +is common enough." "Ay, and then you're told, if you complain, you can go, +if you don't like it. I am sure twelve hands would do all they have done at +home, and yet they keep forty of us. It's generally remarked that, however +strong and healthy a man may be when he goes to work at that shop, in a +month's time he'll be a complete shadow, and have almost all his clothes in +pawn. By Sunday morning, he has no money at all left, and he has to subsist +till the following Saturday upon about a pint of weak tea, and four slices +of bread and butter per day!!!" + +"Another of the reasons for the sweaters keeping more hands than they want +is, the men generally have their meals with them. The more men they have +with them the more breakfasts and teas they supply, and the more profit +they make. The men usually have to pay 4d., and very often, 5d. for their +breakfast, and the same for their tea. The tea or breakfast is mostly a +pint of tea or coffee, and three to four slices of bread and butter. _I +worked for one sweater who almost starved the men; the smallest eater there +would not have had enough if he had got three times as much. They had only +three thin slices of bread and butter, not sufficient for a child, and the +tea was both weak and bad. The whole meal could not have stood him in 2d. +a head, and what made it worse was, that the men who worked there couldn't +afford to have dinners, so that they were starved to the bone._ The +sweater's men generally lodge where they work. A sweater usually keeps +about six men. These occupy two small garrets; one room is called the +kitchen, and the other the workshop; and here the whole of the six men, and +the sweater, his wife, and family, live and sleep. One sweater _I worked +with had four children and six men, and they, together with his wife, +sister-in-law, and himself, all lived in two rooms, the largest of which +was about eight feet by ten. We worked in the smallest room and slept there +as well--all six of us. There were two turnup beds in it, and we slept +three in a bed. There was no chimney, and, indeed, no ventilation whatever. +I was near losing my life there--the foul air of so many people working +all day in the place, and sleeping there at night, was quite suffocating. +Almost all the men were consumptive, and I myself attended the dispensary +for disease of the lungs. The room in which we all slept was not more than +six feet square. We were all sick and weak, and both to work._ Each of the +six of us paid 2s. 6d. a week for our lodging, or 15s. altogether, and I +am sure such a room as we slept and worked in might be had for 1s. a week; +you can get a room with a fire-place for 1s. 6d. a week. The usual sum that +the men working for sweaters pay for their tea, breakfasts, and lodging +is 6s. 6d. to 7s. a week, and they seldom earn more money in the week. +Occasionally at the week's end they are in debt to the sweater. This is +seldom for more than 6d., for the sweater will not give them victuals if +he has no work for them to do. Many who live and work at the sweater's are +married men, and are obliged to keep their wives and children in lodgings +by themselves. Some send them to the workhouse, others to their friends +in the country. Besides the profit of the board and lodging, the sweater +takes 6d. out of the price paid for every garment under 10s.; some take +1s., and I do know of one who takes as much as 2s. This man works for a +large show-shop at the West End. The usual profit of the sweater, over and +above the board and lodging, is 2s. out of every pound. Those who work +for sweaters soon lose their clothes, and are unable to seek for other +work, because they have not a coat to their back to go and seek it in. +_Last week, I worked with another man at a coat for one of her Majesty's +ministers, and my partner never broke his fast while he was making his half +of it._ The minister dealt at a cheap West End show-shop. All the workman +had the whole day-and-a-half he was making the coat was a little tea. But +sweaters' work is not so bad as government work after all. At that, we +cannot make more than 4s. or 5s. a week altogether--that is, counting the +time we are running after it, of course. _Government contract work is the +worst of all, and the starved-out and sweated-out tailor's last resource._ +But still, government does not do the regular trade so much harm as the +cheap show and slop shops. These houses have ruined thousands. They have +cut down the prices, so that men cannot live at the work; and the masters +who did and would pay better wages, are reducing the workmen's pay every +day. They say they must either compete with the large show shops or go into +the 'Gazette.'" + +Sweet competition! Heavenly maid!--Now-a-days hymned alike by +penny-a-liners and philosophers as the ground of all society--the only +real preserver of the earth! Why not of Heaven, too? Perhaps there is +competition among the angels, and Gabriel and Raphael have won their rank +by doing the maximum of worship on the minimum of grace? We shall know some +day. In the meanwhile, "these are thy works, thou parent of all good!" +Man eating man, eaten by man, in every variety of degree and method! Why +does not some enthusiastic political economist write an epic on "The +Consecration of Cannibalism"? + +But if any one finds it pleasant to his soul to believe the poor +journeymen's statements exaggerated, let him listen to one of the sweaters +themselves:-- + +"I wish," says he, "that others did for the men as decently as I do. I +know there are many who are living entirely upon them. Some employ as many +as fourteen men. I myself worked in the house of a man who did this. The +chief part of us lived, and worked, and slept together in two rooms, on the +second floor. They charged 2s. 6d. per head for the lodging alone. Twelve +of the workmen, I am sure, lodged in the house, and these paid altogether +30s. a week rent to the sweater. I should think the sweater paid 8s. a week +for the rooms--so that he gained at least 22s. clear out of the lodging +of these men, and stood at no rent himself. For the living of the men he +charged--5d. for breakfasts, and the same for teas, and 8d. for dinner--or +at the rate of 10s. 6d. each per head. Taking one with the other, and +considering the manner in which they lived, I am certain that the cost for +keeping each of them could not have been more than 5s. This would leave 5s. +6d. clear profit on the board of each of the twelve men, or, altogether, +£3, 6s. per week; and this, added to the £1, 2s. profit on the rent, would +give £4, 8s. for the sweater's gross profit on the board and lodging of +the workmen in his place. But, besides this, he got 1s. out of each coat +made on his premises, and there were twenty-one coats made there, upon an +average, every week; so that, altogether, the sweater's clear gains out of +the men were £5, 9s. every week. Each man made about a coat and a half in +the course of the seven days (_for they all worked on a Sunday--they were +generally told to 'borrow a day off the Lord_.') For this coat and a half +each hand got £1, 2s. 6d., and out of it he had to pay 13s. for board and +lodging; so that there was 9s. 6d. clear left. These are the profits of the +sweater, and the earnings of the men engaged under him, when working for +the first rate houses. But many of the cheap houses pay as low as 8s. for +the making of each dress and frock coat, and some of them as low as 6s. +Hence the earnings of the men at such work would be from 9s. to 12s. per +week, and the cost of their board and lodging without dinners, for these +they seldom have, would be from 7s. 6d. to 8s. per week. Indeed, the men +working under sweaters at such prices generally consider themselves well +off if they have a shilling or two in their pockets for Sunday. The profits +of the sweater, however, would be from £4 to £5 out of twelve men, working +on his premises. The usual number of men working under each sweater is +about six individuals; and the average rate of profit, about £2, 10s., +without the sweater doing any work himself. It is very often the case that +a man working under a sweater is obliged to pawn his own coat to get any +pocket-money that he may require. Over and over again the sweater makes out +that he is in his debt from 1s. to 2s. at the end of the week, and when +the man's coat is in pledge, he is compelled to remain imprisoned in the +sweater's lodgings for months together. In some sweating places, there is +an old coat kept called a "reliever," and this is borrowed by such men as +have none of their own to go out in. There are very few of the sweaters' +men who have a coat to their backs or a shoe to their feet to come out into +the streets on Sunday. Down about Fulwood's Rents, Holborn, I am sure I +would not give 6d. for the clothes that are on a dozen of them; and it is +surprising to me, working and living together in such numbers and in such +small close rooms, in narrow close back courts as they do, that they are +not all swept off by some pestilence. I myself have seen half-a-dozen men +at work in a room that was a little better than a bedstead long. It was as +much as one could do to move between the wall and the bedstead when it was +down. There were two bedsteads in this room, and they nearly filled the +place when they were down. The ceiling was so low, that I couldn't stand +upright in the room. There was no ventilation in the place. There was no +fireplace, and only a small window. When the window was open, you could +nearly touch the houses at the back, and if the room had not been at the +top of the house, the men could not have seen at all in the place. The +staircase was so narrow, steep, and dark, that it was difficult to grope +your way to the top of the house--it was like going up a steeple. This is +the usual kind of place in which the sweater's men are lodged. The reason +why there are so many Irishmen working for the sweaters is, because they +are seduced over to this country by the prospect of high wages and plenty +of work. They are brought over by the Cork boats at 10s. a-head, and when +they once get here, the prices they receive are so small, that they are +unable to go back. In less than a week after they get here, their clothes +are all pledged, and they are obliged to continue working under the +sweaters. + +"The extent to which this system of 'street kidnapping' is carried on +is frightful. Young tailors, fresh from the country, are decoyed by the +sweaters' wives into their miserable dens, under extravagant promises of +employment, to find themselves deceived, imprisoned, and starved, often +unable to make their escape for months--perhaps years; and then only +fleeing from one dungeon to another as abominable." + +In the meantime, the profits of the beasts of prey who live on these poor +fellows--both masters and sweaters--seem as prodigious as their cruelty. + +Hear another working tailor on this point:--"In 1844, I belonged to the +honourable part of the trade. Our house of call supplied the present +show-shop with men to work on the premises. The prices then paid were at +the rate of 6d. per hour. For the same driving capes that they paid 18s. +then, they give only 12s. for now. For the dress and frock coats they gave +15s. then, and now they are 14s. The paletots and shooting coats were 12s.; +there was no coat made on the premises under that sum. At the end of the +season, they wanted to reduce the paletots to 9s. The men refused to make +them at that price, when other houses were paying as much as 15s. for them. +The consequence of this was, the house discharged all the men, and got a +Jew middle-man from the neighbourhood of Petticoat-lane, to agree to do +them all at 7s. 6d. a piece. The Jew employed all the poor people who were +at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity. This +Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week. The Jew gets 2s. 6d. profit +out of each, and having no sewing trimmings allowed to him, he makes the +work-people find them. The saving in trimmings alone to the firm, since +the workmen left the premises, must have realized a small fortune to them. +Calculating men, women, and children, I have heard it said that the cheap +house at the West End employs 1,000 hands. The trimmings for the work done +by these would be about 6d. a week per head, so that the saving to the +house since the men worked on the premises has been no less than £1,300 +a year, and all this taken out of the pockets of the poor. The Jew who +contracts for making the paletots is no tailor at all. A few years ago he +sold sponges in the street, and now he rides in his carriage. The Jew's +profits are 500 half-crowns, or £60 odd, per week--that is upwards of +£3,000 a-year. Women are mostly engaged at the paletot work. When I came to +work for the cheap show-shop I had £5, 10s. in the saving bank; now I have +not a half-penny in it. All I had saved went little by little to keep me +and my family. I have always made a point of putting some money by when I +could afford it, but since I have been at this work it has been as much as +I could do to _live_, much more to _save_. One of the firm for which I work +has been heard publicly to declare that he employed 1,000 hands constantly. +Now the earnings of these at the honourable part of the trade would be upon +an average, taking the skilful with the unskilful, 15s. a week each, or +£39,000 a year. But since they discharged the men from off their premises, +they have cut down the wages of the workmen one-half--taking one garment +with another--_though the selling prices remain the same to the public_, so +that they have saved by the reduction of the workmen's wages no less than +£19,500 per year. Every other quarter of a year something has been 'docked' +off our earnings, until it is almost impossible for men with families to +live decently by their labour; and now, for the first time, they pretend +to feel for them. They even talk of erecting a school for the children of +their workpeople; but where is the use of erecting schools, when they know +as well as we do, that at the wages they pay, the children must be working +for their fathers at home? They had much better erect workshops, and employ +the men on the premises at fair living wages, and then the men could +educate their own children, without being indebted to their charity." + +On this last question of what the master-cannibals had "much better do," we +have somewhat to say presently. In the meantime, hear another of the things +which they had much better _not_ do. "Part of the fraud and deception of +the slop trade consists in the mode in which the public are made believe +that the men working for such establishments earn more money than they +really do. The plan practised is similar to that adopted by the army +clothier, who made out that the men working on his establishment made per +week from 15s. to 17s. each, whereas, on inquiry, it was found that a +considerable sum was paid out of that to those who helped to do the looping +for those who took it home. When a coat is given to me to make, a ticket is +handed to me with the garment, similar to this one which I have obtained +from a friend of mine. + + +--------------------------------------------+ + | 448 | + | Mr. _Smith_ 6,675 Made by _M_ | + | _Ze_ = 12s. = _lined lustre | + | quilted double stitched | + | each side seams_ | + | | + | 448. No. 6,675. | + | o'clock _Friday_ | + | | + | Mr. _Smith_ | + +--------------------------------------------+ + +On this you see the price is marked at 12s.," continued my informant, "and +supposing that I, with two others, could make three of these garments in +the week, the sum of thirty-six shillings would stand in the books of the +establishment as the amount earned by me in that space of time. This would +be sure to be exhibited to the customers, immediately that there was the +least outcry made about the starvation price they paid for their work, as +a proof that the workpeople engaged on their establishment received the +full prices; whereas, of that 36s. entered against my name, _I should have +had to pay 24s. to those who assisted me_; besides this, my share of the +trimmings and expenses would have been 1s. 6d., and probably my share of +the fires would be 1s. more; so that the real fact would be, that I should +make 9s. 6d. clear, and this it would be almost impossible to do, if I did +not work long over hours. I am obliged to keep my wife continually at work +helping me, in order to live." + +In short, the condition of these men is far worse than that of the wretched +labourers of Wilts or Dorset. Their earnings are as low and often lower; +their trade requires a far longer instruction, far greater skill and +shrewdness; their rent and food are more expensive; and their hours of +work, while they have work, more than half as long again. Conceive sixteen +or eighteen hours of skilled labour in a stifling and fetid chamber, +earning not much more than 6s. 6d. or 7s. a week! And, as has been already +mentioned in one case, the man who will earn even that, must work all +Sunday. He is even liable to be thrown out of his work for refusing to work +on Sunday. Why not? Is there anything about one idle day in seven to be +found among the traditions of Mammon? When the demand comes, the supply +must come; and will, in spite of foolish auld-warld notion about keeping +days holy--or keeping contracts holy either, for, indeed, Mammon has no +conscience--right and wrong are not words expressible by any commercial +laws yet in vogue; and therefore it appears that to earn this wretched +pittance is by no means to get it. "For," says one, and the practice is +asserted to be general, almost universal, "there is at our establishment a +mode of reducing the price of our labour even lower than we have mentioned. +The prices we have stated are those _nominally_ paid for making the +garments; but it is not an uncommon thing in our shop for a man to make a +garment, and receive nothing at all for it. I remember a man once having a +waistcoat to do, the price of making which was 2s., and when he gave the +job in he was told that he owed the establishment 6d. The manner in which +this is brought about is by a system of fines. We are fined if we are +behind time with our job, 6d. the first hour, and 3d. for each hour that we +are late." "I have known as much as 7s. 6d. to be deducted off the price of +a coat on the score of want of punctuality," one said; "and, indeed, very +often the whole money is stopped. It would appear, as if our employers +themselves strove to make us late with our work, and so have an opportunity +of cutting down the price paid for our labour. They frequently put off +giving out the trimmings to us till the time at which the coat is due has +expired. If to the trimmer we return an answer that is considered 'saucy,' +we are find 6d. or 1s., according to the trimmer's temper." "I was called a +thief," another of the three declared, "and because I told the man I would +not submit to such language, I was fined 6d. These are the principal of +the in-door fines. The out-door fines are still more iniquitous. There are +full a dozen more fines for minor offences; indeed, we are fined upon every +petty pretext. We never know what we have to take on a Saturday, for the +meanest advantages are taken to reduce our wages. If we object to pay these +fines, we are told that we may leave; but they know full well that we are +afraid to throw ourselves out of work." + +Folks are getting somewhat tired of the old rodomontade that a slave is +free the moment he sets foot on British soil! Stuff!--are these tailors +free? Put any conceivable sense you will on the word, and then say--are +they free? We have, thank God, emancipated the black slaves; it would seem +a not inconsistent sequel to that act to set about emancipating these +white ones. Oh! we forgot; there is an infinite difference between the two +cases--the black slaves worked for our colonies; the white slaves work for +_us_. But, indeed, if, as some preach, self-interest is the mainspring +of all human action, it is difficult to see who will step forward to +emancipate the said white slaves; for all classes seem to consider it +equally their interest to keep them as they are; all classes, though by +their own confession they are ashamed, are yet not afraid to profit by the +system which keeps them down. + +Not only the master tailors and their underlings, but the retail tradesmen, +too, make their profit out of these abominations. By a method which smacks +at first sight somewhat of benevolence, but proves itself in practice to be +one of those "precious balms which break," not "the head" (for that would +savour of violence, and might possibly give some bodily pain, a thing +intolerable to the nerves of Mammon) but the heart--an organ which, being +spiritual, can of course be recognized by no laws of police or commerce. +The object of the State, we are told, is "the conservation of body and +goods"; there is nothing in that about broken hearts; nothing which should +make it a duty to forbid such a system as a working-tailor here describes-- + +"Fifteen or twenty years ago, such a thing as a journeyman tailor having +to give security before he could get work was unknown; but now I and such +as myself could not get a stitch to do first handed, if we did not either +procure the security of some householder, or deposit £5 in the hands of the +employer. The reason of this is, the journeymen are so badly paid, that the +employers know they can barely live on what they get, and consequently they +are often driven to pawn the garments given out to them, in order to save +themselves and their families from starving. If the journeyman can manage +to scrape together £5, he has to leave it in the hands of his employer all +the time that he is working for the house. I know one person who gives out +the work for a fashionable West End slop-shop that will not take household +security, and requires £5 from each hand. I am informed by one of the +parties who worked for this man that he has as many as 150 hands in +his employ, and that each of these has placed £5 in his hands, so that +altogether the poor people have handed over £750 to increase the capital +upon which he trades, and for which he pays no interest whatsoever." + +This recalls a similar case (mentioned by a poor stay-stitcher in another +letter, published in the "Morning Chronicle"), of a large wholesale +staymaker in the City, who had amassed a large fortune by beginning to +trade upon the 5s. which he demanded to be left in his hands by his +workpeople before he gave them employment. + +"Two or three years back one of the slopsellers at the East End became +bankrupt, and the poor people lost all the money that had been deposited +as security for work in his hands. The journeymen who get the security +of householders are enabled to do so by a system which is now in general +practice at the East End. Several bakers, publicans, chandler-shop keepers, +and coal-shed keepers, make a trade of becoming security for those seeking +slop-work. They consent to be responsible for the workpeople upon the +condition of the men dealing at their shops. The workpeople who require +such security are generally very good customers, from the fact of their +either having large families, all engaged in the same work, or else several +females or males working under them, and living at their house. The parties +becoming securities thus not only greatly increase their trade, but furnish +a second-rate article at a first-rate price. It is useless to complain of +the bad quality or high price of the articles supplied by the securities, +for the shopkeepers know, as well as the workpeople, that it is impossible +for the hands to leave them without losing their work. I know one baker +whose security was refused at the slop-shop because he was already +responsible for so many, and he begged the publican to be his deputy, so +that by this means the workpeople were obliged to deal at both baker's +and publican's too. I never heard of a butcher making a trade of becoming +security, _because the slopwork people cannot afford to consume much meat_. + +"The same system is also pursued by lodging-house keepers. They will become +responsible if the workmen requiring security will undertake to lodge at +their house." + +But of course the men most interested in keeping up the system are those +who buy the clothes of these cheap shops. And who are they? Not merely +the blackguard gent--the butt of Albert Smith and Punch, who flaunts at +the Casinos and Cremorne Gardens in vulgar finery wrung out of the souls +and bodies of the poor; not merely the poor lawyer's clerk or reduced +half-pay officer who has to struggle to look as respectable as his class +commands him to look on a pittance often no larger than that of the day +labourer--no, strange to say--and yet not strange, considering our modern +eleventh commandment--"Buy cheap and sell dear," the richest as well as the +poorest imitate the example of King Ryence and the tanners of Meudon, At +a great show establishment--to take one instance out of many--the very +one where, as we heard just now, "however strong and healthy a man may be +when he goes to work at that shop, in a month's time he will be a complete +shadow, and have almost all his clothes in pawn"-- + +"We have also made garments for Sir ---- ----, Sir ---- ----, Alderman +----, Dr. ----, and Dr. ----. We make for several of the aristocracy. We +cannot say whom, because the tickets frequently come to us as Lord ---- and +the Marquis of ----. This could not be a Jew's trick, because the buttons +on the liveries had coronets upon them. And again, we know the house is +patronized largely by the aristocracy, clergy, and gentry, by the number of +court-suits and liveries, surplices, regimentals, and ladies' riding-habits +that we continually have to make up. _There are more clergymen among the +customers than any other class, and often we have to work at home upon +the Sunday at their clothes, in order to get a living._ The customers are +mostly ashamed of dealing at this house, for the men who take the clothes +to the customers' houses in the cart have directions to pull up at the +corner of the street. We had a good proof of the dislike of gentlefolks to +have it known that they dealt at that shop for their clothes, for when the +trousers buttons were stamped with the name of the firm, we used to have +the garments returned, daily, to have other buttons put on them, and now +the buttons are unstamped"!!! + +We shall make no comment on this extract. It needs none. If these men know +how their clothes are made, they are past contempt. Afraid of man, and not +afraid of God! As if His eye could not see the cart laden with the plunder +of the poor, because it stopped round the corner! If, on the other hand, +they do _not_ know these things, and doubtless the majority do not,--it is +their sin that they do not know it. Woe to a society whose only apology to +God and man is, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Men ought to know the condition +of those by whose labour they live. Had the question been the investment +of a few pounds in a speculation, these gentlemen would have been careful +enough about good security. Ought they to take no security when they invest +their money in clothes, that they are not putting on their backs accursed +garments, offered in sacrifice to devils, reeking with the sighs of the +starving, tainted--yes, tainted, indeed, for it comes out now that diseases +numberless are carried home in these same garments from the miserable +abodes where they are made. Evidence to this effect was given in 1844; but +Mammon was too busy to attend to it. These wretched creatures, when they +have pawned their own clothes and bedding, will use as substitutes the +very garments they are making. So Lord ----'s coat has been seen covering +a group of children blotched with small-pox. The Rev. D---- finds himself +suddenly unpresentable from a cutaneous disease, which it is not polite to +mention on the south of Tweed, little dreaming that the shivering dirty +being who made his coat has been sitting with his arms in the sleeves for +warmth while he stitched at the tails. The charming Miss C---- is swept off +by typhus or scarlatina, and her parents talk about "God's heavy judgment +and visitation"--had they tracked the girl's new riding-habit back to the +stifling undrained hovel where it served as a blanket to the fever-stricken +slopworker, they would have seen _why_ God had visited them, seen that His +judgments are true judgments, and give His plain opinion of the system +which "speaketh good of the covetous whom God abhorreth"--a system, to +use the words of the "Morning Chronicle's" correspondent, "unheard of +and unparalleled in the history of any country--a scheme so deeply laid +for the introduction and supply of under-paid labour to the market, that +it is impossible for the working man not to sink and be degraded, by it +into the lowest depths of wretchedness and infamy--a system which is +steadily and gradually increasing, and sucking more and more victims out +of the honourable trade, who are really intelligent artizans, living in +comparative comfort and civilization, into the dishonourable or sweating +trade in which the slopworkers are generally almost brutified by their +incessant toil, wretched pay, miserable food, and filthy homes." + +But to us, almost the worse feature in the whole matter is, that the +government are not merely parties to, but actually the originators of this +system. The contract system, as a working tailor stated, in the name of the +rest, "had been mainly instrumental in destroying the living wages of the +working man. Now, the government were the sole originators of the system +of contracts and of sweating. Forty years ago, there was nothing known of +contracts, except government contracts; and at that period the contractors +were confined to making slops for the navy, the army, and the West India +slaves. It was never dreamt of then that such a system was to come +into operation in the better classes of trade, till ultimately it was +destructive of masters as well as men. The government having been the cause +of the contract system, and consequently of the sweating system, he called +upon them to abandon it. The sweating system had established the show shops +and the ticket system, both of which were countenanced by the government, +till it had become a fashion to support them. + +"Even the court assisted to keep the system in fashion, and the royal arms +and royal warrants were now exhibited common enough by slopsellers." + +Government said its duty was to do justice. But was it consistent with +justice to pay only 2s. 6d. for making navy jackets, which would be paid +10s. for by every 'honourable' tradesman? Was it consistent with justice +for the government to pay for Royal Marine clothing (private's coat and +epaulettes) 1s. 9d.? Was it consistent with justice for the government to +pay for making a pair of trousers (four or five hours' work) only 2-1/2d? +And yet, when a contractor, noted for paying just wages to those he +employed, brought this under the consideration of the Admiralty, they +declared they had nothing to do with it. Here is their answer:-- + +"Admiralty, March 19, 1847. + +"Sir,--Having laid before my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, your +letter of the 8th inst., calling their attention to the extremely low +prices paid for making up articles of clothing, provided for Her Majesty's +naval service, I am commanded by their lordships to acquaint you, that +they have no control whatever over the wages paid for making up contract +clothing. Their duty is to take care that the articles supplied are of good +quality, and well made: the cost of the material and the workmanship are +matters which rest with the contractor; and if the public were to pay him a +higher price than that demanded, it would not ensure any advantage to the +men employed by him, as their wages depend upon the amount of competition +for employment amongst themselves. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, + +"H. G. WARD. + +"W. Shaw, Esq." + +Oh most impotent conclusion, however officially cautious, and +"philosophically" correct! Even if the wages did depend entirely on the +amount of competition, on whom does the amount of competition depend? +Merely on the gross numbers of the workmen? Somewhat, too, one would think, +on the system according to which the labour and the wages are distributed. +But right or wrong, is it not a pleasant answer for the poor working +tailors, and one likely to increase their faith, hope, and charity towards +the present commercial system, and those who deny the possibility of any +other? + +"The government," says another tailor at the same meeting, "had really been +the means of reducing prices in the tailoring trade to so low a scale that +no human being, whatever his industry, could live and be happy in his lot. +The government were really responsible for the first introduction of female +labour. He would clearly prove what he had stated. He would refer first +to the army clothing. Our soldiers were comfortably clothed, as they had +a right to be; but surely the men who made the clothing which was so +comfortable, ought to be paid for their labour so as to be able to keep +themselves comfortable and their families virtuous. But it was in evidence, +that the persons working upon army clothing could not, upon an average, +earn more than 1s. a-day. Another government department, the post-office, +afforded a considerable amount of employment to tailors; but those who +worked upon the post-office clothing earned, at the most, only 1s. 6d. +a-day. The police clothing was another considerable branch of tailoring; +this, like the others, ought to be paid for at living prices; but the men +at work at it could only earn 1s. 6d. a-day, supposing them to work hard +all the time, fourteen or fifteen hours. The Custom House clothing gave +about the same prices. Now, all these sorts of work were performed by time +workers, who, as a natural consequence of the wages they received, were the +most miserable of human beings. Husband, wife, and family all worked at +it; they just tried to breathe upon it; to live it never could be called. +_Yet the same Government which paid such wretched wages, called upon the +wretched people to be industrious, to be virtuous, and happy_, How was +it possible, whatever their industry, to be virtuous and happy? The fact +was, the men who, at the slack season, had been compelled to fall back +upon these kinds of work, became so beggared and broken down by it, +notwithstanding the assistance of their wives and families, that they were +never able to rise out of it." + +And now comes the question--What is to be done with these poor tailors, to +the number of between fifteen and twenty thousand? Their condition, as it +stands, is simply one of ever-increasing darkness and despair. The system +which is ruining them is daily spreading, deepening. While we write, fresh +victims are being driven by penury into the slopworking trade, fresh +depreciations of labour are taking place. Like Ulysses' companions in +the cave of Polyphemus, the only question among them is, to scramble so +far back as to have _a chance of being eaten at last_. Before them is +ever-nearing slavery, disease, and starvation. What can be done? + +First--this can be done. That no man who calls himself a Christian--no +man who calls himself a man--shall ever disgrace himself by dealing at +any show-shop or slop-shop. It is easy enough to know them. The ticketed +garments, the impudent puffs; the trumpery decorations, proclaim +them,--every one knows them at first sight, He who pretends not to do so, +is simply either a fool or a liar. Let no man enter them--they are the +temples of Moloch--their thresholds are rank with human blood. God's curse +is on them, and on those who, by supporting them, are partakers of their +sins. Above all, let no clergyman deal at them. Poverty--and many clergymen +are poor--doubly poor, because society often requires them to keep up the +dress of gentlemen on the income of an artizan; because, too, the demands +on their charity are quadruple those of any other class--yet poverty is no +excuse. The thing is damnable--not Christianity only, but common humanity +cries out against it. Woe to those who dare to outrage in private the +principles which they preach in public! God is not mocked; and his curse +will find out the priest at the altar, as well as the nobleman in his +castle. + +But it is so hard to deprive the public of the luxury of cheap clothes! +Then let the public look out for some other means of procuring that +priceless blessing. If that, on experiment, be found impossible--if the +comfort of the few be for ever to be bought by the misery of the many--if +civilization is to benefit every one except the producing class--then this +world is truly the devil's world, and the sooner so ill-constructed and +infernal a machine is destroyed by that personage, the better. + +But let, secondly, a dozen, or fifty, or a hundred journeymen say to +one another: "It is competition that, is ruining us, and competition is +division, disunion, every man for himself, every man against his brother. +The remedy must be in association, co-operation, self-sacrifice for the +sake of one another. We can work together at the honourable tailor's +workshop--we can work and live together in the sweater's den for the +profit of our employers; why should we not work and live together in our +own workshops, or our own homes, for our own profit? The journeymen of +the honourable trade are just as much interested as the slopworkers in +putting down sweaters and slopsellers, since their numbers are constantly +decreasing, so that their turn must come some day. Let them, if no one else +does, lend money to allow us to set up a workshop of our own, a shop of our +own. If the money be not lent, still let us stint and strain ourselves to +the very bone, if it were only to raise one sweater's security-money, which +one of us should pay into the slopseller's hands, in his own name, but on +behalf of all: that will at least save one sweater's profit out of our +labour, and bestow it upon ourselves; and we will not spend that profit, +but hoard it, till we have squeezed out all the sweaters one by one. Then +we will open our common shop, and sell at as low a price as the cheapest +of the show shops. We _can_ do this,--by the abolition of sweaters' +profits,--by the using, as far as possible, of one set of fires, lights, +rooms, kitchens, and washhouses,--above all, by being true and faithful +to one another, as all partners should be. And, then, all that the master +slopsellers had better do, will be simply to vanish and become extinct." + +And again, let one man, or half-a-dozen men arise, who believe that the +world is not the devil's world at all, but God's: that the multitude of +the people is not, as Malthusians aver, the ruin, but as Solomon believed, +"the strength of the rulers"; that men are not meant to be beasts of prey, +eating one another up by competition, as in some confined pike pond, where +the great pike having despatched the little ones, begin to devour each +other, till one overgrown monster is left alone to die of starvation. Let a +few men who have money, and believe that, arise to play the man. + +Let them help and foster the growth of association by all means. Let them +advise the honourable tailors, while it is time, to save themselves from +being degraded into slopsellers by admitting their journeymen to a share in +profits. Let them encourage the journeymen to compete with Nebuchadnezzar & +Co. at their own game. Let them tell those journeymen that the experiment +is even now being tried, and, in many instances successfully, by no less +than one hundred and four associations of journeymen in Paris. Let them +remind them of that Great Name which the Parisian "ouvrier" so often +forgets--of Him whose everlasting Fatherhood is the sole ground of all +human brotherhood, whose wise and loving will is the sole source of all +perfect order and government. Let them, as soon as an association is +formed, provide for them a properly ventilated workshop, and let it out +to the associate tailors at a low, fair rent. I believe that they will +not lose by it--because it is right. God will take care of their money. +The world, it comes out now, is so well ordered by Him, that model +lodging-houses, public baths, wash-houses, insurance offices, all pay a +reasonable profit to those who invest money in them--perhaps associate +workshops may do the same. At all events, the owners of these show-shops +realize a far higher profit than need be, while the buildings required for +a tailoring establishment are surely not more costly than those absurd +plate-glass fronts, and brass scroll-work chandeliers, and puffs, and paid +poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the +upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the +tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the +ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration +office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this +succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only +true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association +involves a saving both of labour and of capital. Why should it not succeed, +when every one connected with the establishment, landlords and workmen, +will have an interest in increasing its prosperity, and none whatever in +lowering the wages of any party employed? + +But above all, so soon as these men are found working together for common +profit, in the spirit of mutual self-sacrifice, let every gentleman and +every Christian, who has ever dealt with, or could ever have dealt with, +Nebuchadnezzar and Co., or their fellows, make it a point of honour and +conscience to deal with the associated workmen, and get others to do the +like. _It is by securing custom, far more than by gifts or loans of money, +that we can help the operatives._ We should but hang a useless burthen of +debt round their necks by advancing capital, without affording them the +means of disposing of their produce. + +Be assured, that the finding of a tailors' model lodging house, work rooms, +and shop, and the letting out of the two latter to an association, would +be a righteous act to do. If the plan does not pay, what then? only a part +of the money can be lost; and to have given that to an hospital or an +almshouse would have been called praiseworthy and Christian charity; how +much more to have spent it not in the cure, but in the prevention of +evil--in making almshouses less needful, and lessening the number of +candidates for the hospital! + +Regulations as to police order, and temperance, the workmen must, and, if +they are worthy of the name of free men, they can organize for themselves. +Let them remember that an association of labour is very different from +an association of capital. The capitalist only embarks his money on the +venture; the workman embarks his time--that is, much at least of his +life. Still more different is the operatives' association from the single +capitalist, seeking only to realize a rapid fortune, and then withdraw. The +association knows no withdrawal from business; it must grow in length and +in breadth, outlasting rival slopsellers, swallowing up all associations +similar to itself, and which might end by competing with it. "Monopoly!" +cries a free-trader, with hair on end. Not so, good friend; there will +be no real free trade without association. Who tells you that tailors' +associations are to be the only ones? + +Some such thing, as I have hinted, might surely be done. Where there is a +will there is a way. No doubt there are difficulties--Howard and Elizabeth +Fry, too, had their difficulties. Brindley and Brunel did not succeed at +the first trial. It is the sluggard only who is always crying, "There is a +lion in the streets." Be daring--trust in God, and He will fight for you; +man of money, whom these words have touched, godliness has the promise +of this life, as well as of that to come. The thing must be done, and +speedily; for if it be not done by fair means, it will surely do itself +by foul. The continual struggle of competition, not only in the tailors' +trade, but in every one which is not, like the navigator's or engineer's, +at a premium from its novel and extraordinary demand, will weaken and +undermine more and more the masters, who are already many of them +speculating on borrowed capital, while it will depress the workmen to a +point at which life will become utterly intolerable; increasing education +will serve only to make them the more conscious of their own misery; the +boiler will be strained to bursting pitch, till some jar, some slight +crisis, suddenly directs the imprisoned forces to one point, and then-- + +What then? + +Look at France, and see. + +PARSON LOT. + + + + +PREFACE + +_To the UNDERGRADUATES of CAMBRIDGE._ + + +I have addressed this preface to the young gentlemen of the University, +first, because it is my duty to teach such of them as will hear me, Modern +History; and I know no more important part of Modern History than the +condition and the opinions of our own fellow-countrymen, some of which are +set forth in this book. + +Next, I have addressed them now, because I know that many of them, at +various times, have taken umbrage at certain scenes of Cambridge life drawn +in this book. I do not blame them for having done so. On the contrary, I +have so far acknowledged the justice of their censure, that while I have +altered hardly one other word in this book, I have re-written all that +relates to Cambridge life. + +Those sketches were drawn from my own recollections of 1838-1842. Whether +they were overdrawn is a question between me and men of my own standing. + +But the book was published in 1849; and I am assured by men in whom I have +the most thorough confidence, that my sketches had by then at least become +exaggerated and exceptional, and therefore, as a whole, untrue; that a +process of purification was going on rapidly in the University; and that I +must alter my words if I meant to give the working men a just picture of +her. + +Circumstances took the property and control of the book out of my hand, and +I had no opportunity of reconsidering and of altering the passages. Those +circumstances have ceased, and I take the first opportunity of altering all +which my friends tell me should be altered. + +But even if, as early as 1849, I had not been told that I must do so, I +should have done so of my own accord, after the experiences of 1861. I have +received at Cambridge a courtesy and kindness from my elders, a cordial +welcome from my co-equals, and an earnest attention from the undergraduates +with whom I have come in contact, which would bind me in honour to say +nothing publicly against my University, even if I had aught to say. But I +have nought. I see at Cambridge nothing which does not gain my respect for +her present state and hope for her future. Increased sympathy between the +old and young, increased intercourse between the teacher and the taught, +increased freedom and charity of thought, and a steady purpose of internal +self-reform and progress, seem to me already bearing good fruit, by making +the young men regard their University with content and respect. And +among the young men themselves, the sight of their increased earnestness +and high-mindedness, increased sobriety and temperance, combined with a +manliness not inferior to that of the stalwart lads of twenty years ago, +has made me look upon my position among them as most noble, my work among +them as most hopeful, and made me sure that no energy which I can employ in +teaching them will ever have been thrown away. + +Much of this improvement seems to me due to the late High-Church movement; +much to the influence of Dr. Arnold; much to that of Mr. Maurice; much to +the general increase of civilization throughout the country: but whatever +be the causes of it, the fact is patent; and I take delight in thus +expressing my consciousness of it. + +Another change I must notice in the tone of young gentlemen, not only +at Cambridge, but throughout Britain, which is most wholesome and most +hopeful. I mean their altered tone in speaking to and of the labouring +classes. Thirty years ago, and even later, the young men of the labouring +classes were "the cads," "the snobs," "the blackguards"; looked on with a +dislike, contempt, and fear, which they were not backward to return, and +which were but too ready to vent themselves on both sides in ugly words and +deeds. That hateful severance between the classes was, I believe, an evil +of recent growth, unknown to old England. From the middle ages, up to the +latter years of the French war, the relation between the English gentry and +the labourers seems to have been more cordial and wholesome than in any +other country of Europe. But with the French Revolution came a change for +the worse. The Revolution terrified too many of the upper, and excited too +many of the lower classes; and the stern Tory system of repression, with +its bad habit of talking and acting as if "the government" and "the people" +were necessarily in antagonism, caused ever increasing bad blood. Besides, +the old feudal ties between class and class, employer and employed, +had been severed. Large masses of working people had gathered in the +manufacturing districts in savage independence. The agricultural labourers +had been debased by the abuses of the old Poor-law into a condition upon +which one looks back now with half-incredulous horror. Meanwhile, the +distress of the labourers became more and more severe. Then arose Luddite +mobs, meal mobs, farm riots, riots everywhere; Captain Swing and his +rickburners, Peterloo "massacres," Bristol conflagrations, and all the +ugly sights and rumours which made young lads, thirty or forty years ago, +believe (and not so wrongly) that "the masses" were their natural enemies, +and that they might have to fight, any year, or any day, for the safety of +their property and the honour of their sisters. + +How changed, thank God! is all this now. Before the influence of religion, +both Evangelical and Anglican; before the spread of those liberal +principles, founded on common humanity and justice, the triumph of which we +owe to the courage and practical good sense of the Whig party; before the +example of a Court, virtuous, humane, and beneficent; the attitude of the +British upper classes has undergone a noble change. There is no aristocracy +in the world, and there never has been one, as far as I know, which has so +honourably repented, and brought forth fruits meet for repentance; which +has so cheerfully asked what its duty was, that it might do it. It is not +merely enlightened statesmen, philanthropists, devotees, or the working +clergy, hard and heartily as they are working, who have set themselves to +do good as a duty specially required of them by creed or by station. In +the generality of younger laymen, as far as I can see, a humanity (in the +highest sense of the word) has been awakened, which bids fair, in another +generation, to abolish the last remnants of class prejudices and class +grudges. The whole creed of our young gentlemen is becoming more liberal, +their demeanour more courteous, their language more temperate. They inquire +after the welfare, or at least mingle in the sports of the labouring man, +with a simple cordiality which was unknown thirty years ago; they are +prompt, the more earnest of them, to make themselves of use to him on the +ground of a common manhood, if any means of doing good are pointed out to +them; and that it is in any wise degrading to "associate with low fellows," +is an opinion utterly obsolete, save perhaps among a few sons of squireens +in remote provinces, or of parvenus who cannot afford to recognize the +class from whence they themselves have risen. In the army, thanks to the +purifying effect of the Crimean and Indian wars, the same altered tone +is patent. Officers feel for and with their men, talk to them, strive to +instruct and amuse them more and more year by year; and--as a proof that +the reform has not been forced on the officers by public opinion from +without, but is spontaneous and from within, another instance of the +altered mind of the aristocracy--the improvement is greatest in those +regiments which are officered by men of the best blood; and in care for +and sympathy with their men, her Majesty's Footguards stands first of all. +God grant that the friendship which exists there between the leaders and +the led may not be tested to the death amid the snow-drift or on the +battle-field; but if it be so, I know too that it will stand the test. + +But if I wish for one absolute proof of the changed relation between +the upper and the lower classes, I have only to point to the volunteer +movement. In 1803, in the face of the most real and fatal danger, the +Addington ministry was afraid of allowing volunteer regiments, and Lord +Eldon, while pressing the necessity, could use as an argument that if the +people did not volunteer for the Government, they would against it. So +broad was even then the gulf between the governed and the governors. How +much broader did it become in after years! Had invasion threatened us at +any period between 1815 and 1830, or even later, would any ministry have +dared to allow volunteer regiments? Would they have been justified in doing +so, even if they had dared? + +And now what has come to pass, all the world knows: but all the world +should know likewise, that it never would have come to pass save for--not +merely the late twenty years of good government in State, twenty years +of virtue and liberality in the Court, but--the late twenty years of +increasing right-mindedness in the gentry, who have now their reward in +finding that the privates in the great majority of corps prefer being +officered by men of a rank socially superior to their own. And as good +always breeds fresh good, so this volunteer movement, made possible by the +goodwill between classes, will help in its turn to increase that goodwill. +Already, by the performance of a common duty, and the experience of a +common humanity, these volunteer corps are become centres of cordiality +between class and class; and gentleman, tradesman, and workman, the more +they see of each other, learn to like, to trust, and to befriend each other +more and more; a good work in which I hope the volunteers of the University +of Cambridge will do their part like men and gentlemen; when, leaving this +University, they become each of them, as they ought, an organizing point +for fresh volunteers in their own districts. + +I know (that I may return to Cambridge) no better example of the way in +which the altered tone of the upper classes and the volunteer movement +have acted and reacted upon each other, than may be seen in the +Cambridge Working Men's College, and its volunteer rifle corps, the 8th +Cambridgeshire. + +There we have--what perhaps could not have existed, what certainly did not +exist twenty years ago--a school of a hundred men or more, taught for the +last eight years gratuitously by men of the highest attainments in the +University; by a dean--to whom, I believe, the success of the attempt is +mainly owing; by professors, tutors, prizemen, men who are now head-masters +of public schools, who have given freely to their fellow-men knowledge +which has cost them large sums of money and the heavy labour of years. +Without insulting them by patronage, without interfering with their +religious opinions, without tampering with their independence in any wise, +but simply on the ground of a common humanity, they have been helping to +educate these men, belonging for the most part, I presume, to the very +class which this book sets forth as most unhappy and most dangerous--the +men conscious of unsatisfied and unemployed intellect. And they have their +reward in a practical and patent form. Out of these men a volunteer corps +is organized, officered partly by themselves, partly by gentlemen of the +University; a nucleus of discipline, loyalty, and civilization for the +whole population of Cambridge. + +A noble work this has been, and one which may be the parent of works nobler +still. It is the first instalment of, I will not say a debt, but a duty, +which the Universities owe to the working classes. I have tried to express +in this book, what I know were, twenty years ago, the feelings of clever +working men, looking upon the superior educational advantages of our class. +I cannot forget, any more than the working man, that the Universities +were not founded exclusively, or even primarily, for our own class; that +the great mass of students in the middle ages were drawn from the lower +classes, and that sizarships, scholarships, exhibitions, and so forth, were +founded for the sake of those classes, rather than of our own. How the case +stands now, we all know. I do not blame the Universities for the change. It +has come about, I think, simply by competition. The change began, I should +say, in the sixteenth century. Then, after the Wars of the Roses, and the +revival of letters, and the dissolution of the monasteries, the younger +sons of gentlemen betook themselves to the pursuit of letters, fighting +having become treasonable, and farming on a small scale difficult (perhaps +owing to the introduction of large sheep-farms, which happened in those +days), while no monastic orders were left to recruit the Universities, as +they did continually through the middle ages, from that labouring-class to +which they and their scholars principally belonged. + +So the gentlemen's sons were free to compete against the sons of working +men; and by virtue of their superior advantages they beat them out of +the field. We may find through the latter half of the sixteenth and the +beginning of the seventeenth centuries, bequest after bequest for the +purpose of stopping this change, and of enabling poor men's sons to enter +the Universities; but the tendency was too strong to be effectually +resisted then. Is it too strong to be resisted now? Does not the increased +civilization and education of the working classes call on the Universities +to consider whether they may not now try to become, what certainly they +were meant to be, places of teaching and training for genius of every +rank, and not merely for that of young gentlemen? Why should not wealthy +Churchmen, in addition to the many good deeds in which they employ their +wealth now-a-days, found fresh scholarships and exhibitions, confined to +the sons of working men? If it be asked, how can they be so confined? What +simpler method than that of connecting them with the National Society, and +bestowing them exclusively on lads who have distinguished themselves in our +National Schools? I believe that money spent in such a way, would be well +spent both for the Nation, the Church, and the University. As for the +introduction of such a class of lads lowering the tone of the University, I +cannot believe it. There is room enough in Cambridge for men of every rank. +There are still, in certain colleges, owing to circumstances which I should +be very sorry to see altered, a fair sprinkling of young men who, at least +before they have passed through a Cambridge career, would not be called +well-bred. But they do not lower the tone of the University; the tone of +the University raises them. Wherever there is intellectual power, good +manners are easily acquired; the public opinion of young men expresses +itself so freely, and possibly coarsely, that priggishness and forwardness +(the faults to which a clever National School pupil would be most prone) +are soon hammered out of any Cambridge man; and the result is, that some of +the most distinguished and most popular men in Cambridge, are men who have +"risen from the ranks." All honour to them for having done so. But if they +have succeeded so well, may there not be hundreds more in England who would +succeed equally? and would it not be as just to the many, as useful to the +University, in binding her to the people and the people to her, to invent +some method for giving those hundreds a fair chance? + +I earnestly press this suggestion (especially at the present time of +agitation among Churchmen on the subject of education) upon the attention, +not of the University itself, but of those wealthy men who wish well both +to the University and to the people. Not, I say, of the University: it is +not from her that the proposal must come, but from her friends outside. She +is doing her best with the tools which she has; fresh work will require +fresh tools, and I trust that such will be some day found for her. + +I have now to tell those of them who may read this book, that it is not +altogether out of date. + +Those political passions, the last outburst of which it described, have, +thank God, become mere matter of history by reason of the good government +and the unexampled prosperity of the last twelve years: but fresh outbursts +of them are always possible in a free country, whenever there is any +considerable accumulation of neglects and wrongs; and meanwhile it is +well--indeed it is necessary--for every student of history to know what +manner of men they are who become revolutionaries, and what causes drive +them to revolution; that they may judge discerningly and charitably of +their fellow-men, whenever they see them rising, however madly, against the +powers that be. + +As for the social evils described in this book, they have been much +lessened in the last few years, especially by the movement for Sanatory +Reform: but I must warn young men that they are not eradicated; that for +instance, only last year, attention was called by this book to the working +tailors in Edinburgh, and their state was found, I am assured, to be +even more miserable than that of the London men in 1848. And I must warn +them also that social evils, like dust and dirt, have a tendency to +re-accumulate perpetually; so that however well this generation may have +swept their house (and they have worked hard and honestly at it), the +rising generation will have assuredly in twenty years' time to sweep it +over again. + +One thing more I have to say, and that very earnestly, to the young men of +Cambridge. They will hear a "Conservative Reaction" talked of as imminent, +indeed as having already begun. They will be told that this reaction is +made more certain by the events now passing in North America; they will be +bidden to look at the madnesses of an unbridled democracy, to draw from +them some such lesson as the young Spartans were to draw from the drunken +Helots, and to shun with horror any further attempts to enlarge the +suffrage. + +But if they have learnt (as they should from the training of this +University) accuracy of thought and language, they will not be content with +such vague general terms as "Conservatism" and "Democracy": but will ask +themselves--If this Conservative Reaction is at hand, what things is it +likely to conserve; and still more, what ought it to conserve? If the +violences and tyrannies of American Democracy are to be really warnings +to, then in what points does American Democracy coincide with British +Democracy?--For so far and no farther can one be an example or warning for +the other. + +And looking, as they probably will under the pressure of present +excitement, at the latter question first, they will surely see that no +real analogy would exist between American and English Democracy, even were +universal suffrage to be granted to-morrow. + +For American Democracy, being merely arithmocratic, provides no +representation whatsoever for the more educated and more experienced +minority, and leaves the conduct of affairs to the uneducated and +inexperienced many, with such results as we see. But those results are, I +believe, simply impossible in a country which possesses hereditary Monarchy +and a House of Lords, to give not only voice, but practical power to +superior intelligence and experience. Mr. J. S. Mill, Mr. Stapleton, and +Mr. Hare have urged of late the right of minorities to be represented as +well as majorities, and have offered plans for giving them a fair hearing. +That their demands are wise, as well as just, the present condition of the +Federal States proves but too painfully. But we must not forget meanwhile, +that the minorities of Britain are not altogether unrepresented. In a +hereditary Monarch who has the power to call into his counsels, private and +public, the highest intellect of the land; in a House of Lords not wholly +hereditary, but recruited perpetually from below by the most successful +(and therefore, on the whole, the most capable) personages; in a free +Press, conducted in all its most powerful organs by men of character and +of liberal education, I see safeguards against any American tyranny of +numbers, even if an enlargement of the suffrage did degrade the general +tone of the House of Commons as much as some expect. + +As long, I believe, as the Throne, the House of Lords, and the Press, are +what, thank God, they are, so long will each enlargement of the suffrage be +a fresh source not of danger, but of safety; for it will bind the masses to +the established order of things by that loyalty which springs from content; +from the sense of being appreciated, trusted, dealt with not as children, +but as men. + +There are those who will consider such language as this especially +ill-timed just now, in the face of Strikes and Trades' Union outrages. +They point to these things as proofs of the unfitness of workmen for the +suffrage; they point especially to the late abominable murder at Sheffield, +and ask, not without reason, would you give political power to men who +would do that? + +Now that the Sheffield murder was in any wise planned or commanded by the +Trades' Unions in general, I do not believe; nor, I think, does any one +else who knows aught of the British workman. If it was not, as some of the +Sheffield men say, a private act of revenge, it was the act of only one +or two Trades' Unions of that town, which are known; and their conduct +has been already reprobated and denounced by the other Trades' Unions of +England, But there is no denying that the case as against the Trades' +Unions is a heavy one. It is notorious that they have in past years planned +and commanded illegal acts of violence. It is patent that they are too apt, +from a false sense of class-honour, to connive at such now, instead of +being, as they ought to be, the first to denounce them. The workmen will +not see, that by combining in societies for certain purposes, they make +those societies responsible for the good and lawful behaviour of all their +members, in all acts tending to further those purposes, and are bound to +say to every man joining a Trades' Union: "You shall do nothing to carry +out the objects which we have in view, save what is allowed by British +Law." They will not see that they are outraging the first principles of +justice and freedom, by dictating to any man what wages he should receive, +what master he shall work for, or any other condition which interferes with +his rights as a free agent. + +But, in the face of these facts (and very painful and disappointing +they are to me), I will ask the upper classes: Do you believe that the +average of Trades' Union members are capable of such villanies as that at +Sheffield? Do you believe that the average of them are given to violence +or illegal acts at all, even though they may connive at such acts in their +foolish and hasty fellows, by a false class-honour, not quite unknown, +I should say, in certain learned and gallant professions? Do you fancy +that there are not in these Trades' Unions, tens of thousands of loyal, +respectable, rational, patient men, as worthy of the suffrage as any +average borough voter? If you do so, you really know nothing about the +British workman. At least, you are confounding the workman of 1861 with the +workman of 1831, and fancying that he alone, of all classes, has gained +nothing by the increased education, civilization, and political experience +of thirty busy and prosperous years. You are unjust to the workman; and +more, you are unjust to your own class. For thirty years past, gentlemen +and ladies of all shades of opinion have been labouring for and among the +working classes, as no aristocracy on earth ever laboured before; and do +you suppose that all that labour has been in vain? That it has bred in the +working classes no increased reverence for law, no increased content with +existing institutions, no increased confidence in the classes socially +above them? If so, you must have as poor an opinion of the capabilities of +the upper classes, as you have of those of the lower. + +So far from the misdoings of Trades' Unions being an argument against the +extension of the suffrage, they are, in my opinion, an argument for it. I +know that I am in a minority just now. I know that the common whisper is +now, not especially of those who look for a Conservative reaction, that +these Trades' Unions must be put down by strong measures: and I confess +that I hear such language with terror. Punish, by all means, most severely, +all individual offences against individual freedom, or personal safety; +but do not interfere, surely, with the Trades' Unions themselves. Do not +try to bar these men of their right as free Englishmen to combine, if they +choose, for what they consider their own benefit. Look upon these struggles +between employers and employed as fair battles, in which, by virtue of the +irreversible laws of political economy, the party who is in the right is +almost certain to win; and interfere in no wise, save to see fair play, and +lawful means used on both sides alike. If you do more; if you interfere +in any wise with the Trades' Unions themselves, you will fail, and fail +doubly. You will not prevent the existence of combinations: you will only +make them secret, dark, revolutionary: you will demoralize the working man +thereby as surely as the merchant is demoralized by being converted into a +smuggler; you will heap up indignation, spite, and wrath against the day +of wrath; and finally, to complete your own failure, you will drive the +working man to demand an extension of the suffrage, in tones which will +very certainly get a hearing. He cares, or seems to care, little about +the suffrage now, just because he thinks that he can best serve his own +interests by working these Trades' Unions. Take from him that means of +redress (real or mistaken, no matter); and he will seek redress in a way in +which you wish him still less to seek it; by demanding a vote and obtaining +one. + +That consummation, undesirable as it may seem to many, would perhaps be the +best for the peace of the trades. These Trades' Unions, still tainted with +some of the violence, secrecy, false political economy which they inherit +from the evil times of 1830-40, last on simply, I believe, because the +workman feels that they are his only organ, that he has no other means of +making his wants and his opinions known to the British Government. Had he a +vote, he believes (and I believe with him) he could send at least a few men +to Parliament who would state his case fairly in the House of Commons, and +would not only render a reason for him, but hear reason against him, if +need were. He would be content with free discussion if he could get that. +It is the feeling that he cannot get it that drives him often into crooked +and dark ways. If any answer, that the representatives, whom he would +choose would be merely noisy demagogues, I believe them to be mistaken. +No one can have watched the Preston strike, however much he may have +disapproved, as I did, of the strike itself, without seeing from the +temper, the self-restraint, the reasonableness, the chivalrous honour of +the men, that they were as likely to choose a worthy member for the House +of Commons as any town constituency in England; no one can have watched the +leaders of the working men for the last ten years without finding among +them men capable of commanding the attention and respect of the House of +Commons, not merely by their eloquence, surprising as that is, but by their +good sense, good feeling, and good breeding. + +Some training at first, some rubbing off of angles, they might require: +though two at least I know, who would require no such training, and who +would be ornaments to any House of Commons; the most inexperienced of the +rest would not give the House one-tenth the trouble which is given by a +certain clique among the representatives of the sister Isle; and would, +moreover, learn his lesson in a week, instead of never learning it at all, +like some we know too well. Yet Catholic emancipation has pacified Ireland, +though it has brought into the House an inferior stamp of members: and much +more surely would an extension of the suffrage pacify the trades, while +it would bring into the House a far superior stamp of member to those who +compose the clique of which I have spoken. + +But why, I hear some one say impatiently, talk about this subject of all +others at this moment, when nobody, not even the working classes, cares +about a Reform Bill? + +Because I am speaking to young men, who have not yet entered public life; +and because I wish them to understand, that just because the question of +parliamentary reform is in abeyance now, it will not be in abeyance ten +years or twenty years hence. The question will be revived, ere they are +in the maturity of their manhood; and they had best face that certain +prospect, and learn to judge wisely and accurately on the subject, before +they are called on, as they will be, to act upon it. If it be true that the +present generation has done all that it can do, or intends to do, towards +the suffrage (and I have that confidence in our present rulers, that I +would submit without murmuring to their decision on the point), it is +all the more incumbent on the rising generation to learn how to do (as +assuredly they will have to do) the work which their fathers have left +undone. The question may remain long in abeyance, under the influence of +material prosperity such as the present; or under the excitement of a war, +as in Pitt's time; but let a period of distress or disaster come, and it +will be re-opened as of yore. The progress towards institutions more and +more popular may be slow, but it is sure. Whenever any class has conceived +the hope of being fairly represented, it is certain to fulfil its own +hopes, unless it employs, or provokes, violence impossible in England. +The thing will be. Let the young men of Britain take care that it is done +rightly when it is done. + +And how ought it to be done? That will depend upon any circumstances now +future and uncertain. It will depend upon the pace at which sound education +spreads among the working classes. It will depend, too, very much--I fear +only too much--upon the attitude of the upper classes to the lower, in this +very question of Trades' Unions and of Strikes. It will depend upon their +attitude toward the unrepresented classes during the next few years, upon +this very question of extended suffrage. And, therefore, I should advise, +I had almost said entreat, any young men over whom I have any influence, +to read and think freely and accurately upon the subject; taking, if +I may propose to them a text-book, Mr. Mill's admirable treatise on +"Representative Government." As for any theory of my own, if I had one +I should not put it forward. How it will not be done, I can see clearly +enough. It will not be done well by the old charter. It will not be done +well by merely lowering the money qualification of electors. But it may +be done well by other methods beside; and I can trust the freedom and +soundness of the English mind to discover the best method of all, when it +is needed. + +Let therefore this "Conservative Reaction" which I suspect is going on in +the minds of many young men at Cambridge, consider what it has to conserve. +It is not asked to conserve the Throne. That, thank God, can take good care +of itself. Let it conserve the House of Lords; and that will be conserved, +just in proportion as the upper classes shall copy the virtues of Royalty; +both of him who is taken from us, and of her who is left. Let the upper +classes learn from them, that the just and wise method of strengthening +their political power, is to labour after that social power, which comes +only by virtue and usefulness. Let them make themselves, as the present +Sovereign has made herself, morally necessary to the people; and then there +is no fear of their being found politically unnecessary. No other course +is before them, if they wish to make their "Conservative Reaction" a +permanent, even an endurable fact. If any young gentlemen fancy (and some +do) that they can strengthen their class by making any secret alliance with +the Throne against the masses, then they will discover rapidly that the +sovereigns of the House of Brunswick are grown far too wise, and far too +noble-hearted, to fall once more into that trap. If any of them (and some +do) fancy that they can better their position by sneering, whether in +public or in their club, at a Reformed House of Commons and a Free Press, +they will only accelerate the results which they most dread, by forcing +the ultra-liberal party of the House, and, what is even worse, the most +intellectual and respectable portion of the Press, to appeal to the people +against them; and if again they are tempted (as too many of them are) to +give up public life as becoming too vulgar for them, and prefer ease and +pleasure to the hard work and plain-speaking of the House of Commons; then +they will simply pay the same penalty for laziness and fastidiousness which +has been paid by the Spanish aristocracy; and will discover that if they +think their intellect unnecessary to the nation, the nation will rapidly +become of the same opinion, and go its own way without them. + +But if they are willing to make themselves, as they easily can, the +best educated, the most trustworthy, the most virtuous, the most truly +liberal-minded class of the commonweal; if they will set themselves to +study the duties of rank and property, as of a profession to which they are +called by God, and the requirements of which they must fulfil; if they will +acquire, as they can easily, a sound knowledge both of political economy, +and of the social questions of the day; if they will be foremost with +their personal influence in all good works; if they will set themselves +to compete on equal terms with the classes below them, and, as they may, +outrival them: then they will find that those classes will receive them not +altogether on equal terms; that they will accede to them a superiority, +undefined perhaps, but real and practical enough to conserve their class +and their rank, in every article for which a just and prudent man would +wish. + +But if any young gentlemen look forward (as I fear a few do still) to a +Conservative Reaction of any other kind than this; to even the least return +to the Tory maxims and methods of George the Fourth's time; to even the +least stoppage of what the world calls progress--which I should define +as the putting in practice the results of inductive science; then do +they, like king Picrochole in Rabelais, look for a kingdom which shall be +restored to them at the coming of the Cocqcigrues. The Cocqcigrues are +never coming; and none know that better than the present able and moderate +leaders of the Conservative party; none will be more anxious to teach that +fact to their young adherents, and to make them swim with the great stream, +lest it toss them contemptuously ashore upon its banks, and go on its way +unheeding. + +Return to the system of 1800--1830, is, I thank God, impossible. Even +though men's hearts should fail them, they must onward, they know not +whither: though God does know. The bigot, who believes in a system, and not +in the living God; the sentimentalist, who shrinks from facts because they +are painful to his taste; the sluggard, who hates a change because it +disturbs his ease; the simply stupid person, who cannot use his eyes and +ears; all these may cry feebly to the world to do what it has never done +since its creation--stand still awhile, that they may get their breaths. +But the brave and honest gentleman--who believes that God is not the +tempter and deceiver, but the father and the educator of man--he will +not shrink, even though the pace may be at moments rapid, the path be at +moments hid by mist; for he will believe that freedom and knowledge, as +well as virtue, are the daughters of the Most High; and he will follow them +and call on the rest to follow them, whithersoever they may lead; and will +take heart for himself and for his class, by the example of that great +Prince who is of late gone home. For if, like that most royal soul, he and +his shall follow with single eye and steadfast heart, freedom, knowledge, +and virtue; then will he and his be safe, as Royalty is safe in England +now; because both God and man have need thereof. + + + + +PREFACE. + +_Written in 1854._ + +ADDRESSED TO THE WORKING MEN OF GREAT BRITAIN. + + +My Friends,--Since I wrote this book five years ago, I have seen a good +deal of your class, and of their prospects. Much that I have seen has given +me great hope; much has disappointed me; nothing has caused me to alter the +opinions here laid down. + +Much has given me hope; especially in the North of England. I believe that +there, at least, exists a mass of prudence, self-control, genial and sturdy +manhood, which will be England's reserve-force for generations yet to come. +The last five years, moreover, have certainly been years of progress for +the good cause. The great drag upon it--namely, demagogism--has crumbled to +pieces of its own accord; and seems now only to exhibit itself in anilities +like those of the speakers who inform a mob of boys and thieves that wheat +has lately been thrown into the Thames to keep up prices, or advise them +to establish, by means hitherto undiscovered, national granaries, only +possible under the despotism of a Pharaoh. Since the 10th of April, 1848 +(one of the most lucky days which the English workman ever saw), the trade +of the mob-orator has dwindled down to such last shifts as these, to which +the working man sensibly seems merely to answer, as he goes quietly about +his business, "Why will you still keep talking, Signor Benedick? Nobody +marks you." + +But the 10th of April, 1848, has been a beneficial crisis, not merely in +the temper of the working men, so called, but in the minds of those who are +denominated by them "the aristocracy." There is no doubt that the classes +possessing property have been facing, since 1848, all social questions with +an average of honesty, earnestness, and good feeling which has no parallel +since the days of the Tudors, and that hundreds and thousands of "gentlemen +and ladies" in Great Britain now are saying, "Show what we ought to do to +be just to the workman, and we will do it, whatsoever it costs." They may +not be always correct (though they generally are so) in their conceptions +of what ought to be done; but their purpose is good and righteous; and +those who hold it are daily increasing in number. The love of justice and +mercy toward the handicraftsman is spreading rapidly as it never did before +in any nation upon earth; and if any man still represents the holders of +property, as a class, as the enemies of those whom they employ, desiring +their slavery and their ignorance, I believe that he is a liar and a child +of the devil, and that he is at his father's old work, slandering and +dividing between man and man. These words may be severe: but they are +deliberate; and working men are, I hope, sufficiently accustomed to hear me +call a spade a spade, when I am pleading for them, to allow me to do the +same when I am pleading to them. + +Of the disappointing experiences which I have had I shall say nothing, +save in as far as I can, by alluding to them, point out to the working man +the causes which still keep him weak: but I am bound to say that those +disappointments have strengthened my conviction that this book, in the +main, speaks the truth. + +I do not allude, of course, to the thoughts, and feelings of the hero. They +are compounded of right and wrong, and such as I judged (and working men +whom I am proud to number among my friends have assured me that I judged +rightly) that a working man of genius would feel during the course of +his self-education. These thoughts and feelings (often inconsistent and +contradictory to each other), stupid or careless, or ill-willed persons, +have represented as my own opinions, having, as it seems to me, turned +the book upside down before they began to read it. I am bound to pay the +working men, and their organs in the press, the compliment of saying that +no such misrepresentations proceeded from them. However deeply some of +them may have disagreed with me, all of them, as far as I have been able +to judge, had sense to see what I meant; and so, also, have the organs of +the High-Church party, to whom, differing from them on many points, I am +equally bound to offer my thanks for their fairness. But, indeed, the way +in which this book, in spite of its crudities, has been received by persons +of all ranks and opinions, who instead of making me an offender for a +word, have taken the book heartily and honestly, in the spirit and not in +the letter, has made me most hopeful for the British mind, and given me +a strong belief that, in spite of all foppery, luxury, covetousness, and +unbelief, the English heart is still strong and genial, able and willing +to do and suffer great things, as soon as the rational way of doing and +suffering them becomes plain. Had I written this book merely to please +my own fancy, this would be a paltry criterion, at once illogical and +boastful; but I wrote it, God knows, in the fear of God, that I might speak +what seems to me the truth of God. I trusted in Him to justify me, in spite +of my own youth, inexperience, hastiness, clumsiness; and He has done it; +and, I trust, will do it to the end. + +And now, what shall I say to you, my friends, about the future? Your +destiny is still in your own hands. For the last seven years you have let +it slip through your fingers. If you are better off than you were in 1848, +you owe it principally to those laws of political economy (as they are +called), which I call the brute natural accidents of supply and demand, or +to the exertions which have been made by upright men of the very classes +whom demagogues taught you to consider as your natural enemies. Pardon me +if I seem severe; but, as old Aristotle has it, "Both parties being my +friends, it is a sacred duty to honour truth first." And is this not the +truth? How little have the working men done to carry out that idea of +association in which, in 1848-9, they were all willing to confess their +salvation lay. Had the money which was wasted in the hapless Preston strike +been wisely spent in relieving the labour market by emigration, or in +making wages more valuable by enabling the workman to buy from co-operative +stores and mills his necessaries at little above cost price, how much +sorrow and heart-burning might have been saved to the iron-trades. Had the +real English endurance and courage which was wasted in that strike been +employed in the cause of association, the men might have been, ere now, far +happier than they are ever likely to be, without the least injury to the +masters. What, again, has been done toward developing the organization +of the Trades' Unions into its true form, Association for distribution, +from its old, useless, and savage form of Association for the purpose of +resistance to masters--a war which is at first sight hopeless, even were it +just, because the opposite party holds in his hand the supplies of his foe +as well as his own, and therefore can starve him out at his leisure? What +has been done, again, toward remedying the evils of the slop system, which +this book especially exposed? The true method for the working men, if they +wished to save their brothers and their brothers' wives and daughters from +degradation, was to withdraw their custom from the slopsellers, and to +deal, even at a temporary increase of price, with associate workmen. Have +they done so? They can answer for themselves. In London (as in the country +towns), the paltry temptation of buying in the cheapest market has still +been too strong for the labouring man. In Scotland and in the North of +England, thank God, the case has been very different; and to the North I +must look still, as I did when I wrote Alton Locke, for the strong men in +whose hands lies the destiny of the English handicraftsman. + +God grant that the workmen of the South of England may bestir themselves +ere it be too late, and discover that the only defence against want is +self-restraint; the only defence against slavery, obedience to rule; and +that, instead of giving themselves up, bound hand and foot, by their own +fancy for a "freedom" which is but selfish and conceited license, to the +brute accidents of the competitive system, they may begin to organize +among themselves associations for buying and selling the necessaries of +life, which may enable them to weather the dark season of high prices and +stagnation, which is certain sooner or later, to follow in the footsteps of +war. + +On politics I have little to say. My belief remains unchanged that true +Christianity, and true monarchy also, are not only compatible with, but +require as their necessary complement, true freedom for every man of every +class; and that the Charter, now defunct, was just as wise and as righteous +a "Reform Bill" as any which England had yet had, or was likely to have. +But I frankly say that my experience of the last five years gives me little +hope of any great development of the true democratic principle in Britain, +because it gives me little sign that the many are fit for it. Remember +always that Democracy means a government not merely by numbers of isolated +individuals, but by a Demos--by men accustomed to live in Demoi, or +corporate bodies, and accustomed, therefore, to the self-control, obedience +to law, and self-sacrificing public spirit, without which a corporate body +cannot exist: but that a "democracy" of mere numbers is no democracy, +but a mere brute "arithmocracy," which is certain to degenerate into an +"ochlocracy," or government by the mob, in which the numbers have no real +share: an oligarchy of the fiercest, the noisiest, the rashest, and the +most shameless, which is surely swallowed up either by a despotism, as in +France, or as in Athens, by utter national ruin, and helpless slavery to +a foreign invader. Let the workmen of Britain train themselves in the +corporate spirit, and in the obedience and self-control which it brings, as +they easily can in associations, and bear in mind always that _only he who +can obey is fit to rule_; and then, when they are fit for it, the Charter +may come, or things, I trust, far better than the Charter; and till they +have done so, let them thank the just and merciful Heavens for keeping +out of their hands any power, and for keeping off their shoulders any +responsibility, which they would not be able to use aright. I thank God +heartily, this day, that I have no share in the government of Great +Britain; and I advise my working friends to do the same, and to believe +that, when they are fit to take their share therein, all the powers of +earth cannot keep them from taking it; and that, till then, happy is the +man who does the duty which lies nearest him, who educates his family, +raises his class, performs his daily work as to God and to his country, not +merely to his employer and himself; for it is only he that is faithful over +a few things who will be made, or will be happy in being made, ruler over +many things. + +Yours ever, + +C. K. + + + + +ALTON LOCKE, + +TAILOR AND POET. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A POET'S CHILDHOOD. + + +I am a Cockney among Cockneys. Italy and the Tropics, the Highlands +and Devonshire, I know only in dreams. Even the Surrey Hills, of whose +loveliness I have heard so much, are to me a distant fairy-land, whose +gleaming ridges I am worthy only to behold afar. With the exception of two +journeys, never to be forgotten, my knowledge of England is bounded by the +horizon which encircles Richmond Hill. + +My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of its jumble of little +shops and little terraces, each exhibiting some fresh variety of capricious +ugliness; the little scraps of garden before the doors, with their dusty, +stunted lilacs and balsam poplars, were my only forests; my only wild +animals, the dingy, merry sparrows, who quarrelled fearlessly on my +window-sill, ignorant of trap or gun. From my earliest childhood, through +long nights of sleepless pain, as the midnight brightened into dawn, and +the glaring lamps grew pale, I used to listen, with pleasant awe, to the +ceaseless roll of the market-waggons, bringing up to the great city the +treasures of the gay green country, the land of fruits and flowers, for +which I have yearned all my life in vain. They seemed to my boyish fancy +mysterious messengers from another world: the silent, lonely night, in +which they were the only moving things, added to the wonder. I used to get +out of bed to gaze at them, and envy the coarse men and sluttish women who +attended them, their labour among verdant plants and rich brown mould, on +breezy slopes, under God's own clear sky. I fancied that they learnt what +I knew I should have learnt there; I knew not then that "the eye only sees +that which it brings with it the power of seeing." When will their eyes be +opened? When will priests go forth into the highways and the hedges, and +preach to the ploughman and the gipsy the blessed news, that there too, in +every thicket and fallow-field, is the house of God,--there, too, the gate +of Heaven? + +I do not complain that I am a Cockney. That, too, is God's gift. He +made me one, that I might learn to feel for poor wretches who sit +stifled in reeking garrets and workrooms, drinking in disease with every +breath,--bound in their prison-house of brick and iron, with their own +funeral pall hanging over them, in that canopy of fog and poisonous smoke, +from their cradle to their grave. I have drunk of the cup of which they +drink. And so I have learnt--if, indeed, I have learnt--to be a poet--a +poet of the people. That honour, surely, was worth buying with asthma, +and rickets, and consumption, and weakness, and--worst of all to me--with +ugliness. It was God's purpose about me; and, therefore, all circumstances +combined to imprison me in London. I used once, when I worshipped +circumstance, to fancy it my curse, Fate's injustice to me, which kept +me from developing my genius, asserting my rank among poets. I longed to +escape to glorious Italy, or some other southern climate, where natural +beauty would have become the very element which I breathed; and yet, what +would have come of that? Should I not, as nobler spirits than I have done, +have idled away my life in Elysian dreams, singing out like a bird into the +air, inarticulately, purposeless, for mere joy and fulness of heart; and +taking no share in the terrible questionings, the terrible strugglings of +this great, awful, blessed time--feeling no more the pulse of the great +heart of England stirring me? I used, as I said, to call it the curse of +circumstance that I was a sickly, decrepit Cockney. My mother used to tell +me that it was the cross which God had given me to bear. I know now that +she was right there. She used to say that my disease was God's will. I do +not think, though, that she spoke right there also. I think that it was +the will of the world and of the devil, of man's avarice and laziness and +ignorance. And so would my readers, perhaps, had they seen the shop in +the city where I was born and nursed, with its little garrets reeking +with human breath, its kitchens and areas with noisome sewers. A sanitary +reformer would not be long in guessing the cause of my unhealthiness. He +would not rebuke me--nor would she, sweet soul! now that she is at rest and +bliss--for my wild longings to escape, for my envying the very flies and +sparrows their wings that I might flee miles away into the country, and +breathe the air of heaven once, and die. I have had my wish. I have made +two journeys far away into the country, and they have been enough for me. + +My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small +retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate; and when he died, my +mother came down, and lived penuriously enough, I knew not how till I +grew older, down in that same suburban street. She had been brought +up an Independent. After my father's death she became a Baptist, from +conscientious scruples. She considered the Baptists, as I do, as the only +sect who thoroughly embody the Calvinistic doctrines. She held it, as I do, +an absurd and impious thing for those who believe mankind to be children +of the devil till they have been consciously "converted," to baptise +unconscious infants and give them the sign of God's mercy on the mere +chance of that mercy being intended for them. When God had proved by +converting them, that they were not reprobate and doomed to hell by His +absolute and eternal will, then, and not till then, dare man baptise them +into His name. She dared not palm a presumptuous fiction on herself, +and call it "charity." So, though we had both been christened during +my father's lifetime, she purposed to have us rebaptised, if ever that +happened--which, in her sense of the word, never happened, I am afraid, to +me. + +She gloried in her dissent; for she was sprung from old Puritan blood, +which had flowed again and again beneath the knife of Star-Chamber +butchers, and on the battle-fields of Naseby and Sedgemoor. And on winter +evenings she used to sit with her Bible on her knee, while I and my little +sister Susan stood beside her and listened to the stories of Gideon and +Barak, and Samson and Jephthah, till her eye kindled up, and her thoughts +passed forth from that old Hebrew time home into those English times which +she fancied, and not untruly, like them. And we used to shudder, and yet +listen with a strange fascination, as she told us how her ancestor called +his seven sons off their small Cambridge farm, and horsed and armed them +himself to follow behind Cromwell, and smite kings and prelates with "the +sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Whether she were right or wrong, what +is it to me? What is it now to her, thank God? But those stories, and the +strict, stern Puritan education, learnt from the Independents and not the +Baptists, which accompanied them, had their effect on me, for good and ill. + +My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and +that only. She seldom smiled. Her word was absolute. She never commanded +twice, without punishing. And yet there were abysses of unspoken tenderness +in her, as well as clear, sound, womanly sense and insight. But she thought +herself as much bound to keep down all tenderness as if she had been some +ascetic of the middle ages--so do extremes meet! It was "carnal," she +considered. She had as yet no right to have any "spiritual affection" for +us. We were still "children of wrath and of the devil,"--not yet "convinced +of sin," "converted, born again." She had no more spiritual bond with us, +she thought, than she had with a heathen or a Papist. She dared not even +pray for our conversion, earnestly as she prayed on every other subject. +For though the majority of her sect would have done so, her clear logical +sense would yield to no such tender inconsistency. Had it not been decided +from all eternity? We were elect, or we were reprobate. Could her prayers +alter that? If He had chosen us, He would call us in His own good time: +and, if not,--. Only again and again, as I afterwards discovered from a +journal of hers, she used to beseech God with agonized tears to set her +mind at rest by revealing to her His will towards us. For that comfort she +could at least rationally pray. But she received no answer. Poor, beloved +mother! If thou couldst not read the answer, written in every flower and +every sunbeam, written in the very fact of our existence here at all, what +answer would have sufficed thee. + +And yet, with all this, she kept the strictest watch over our morality. +Fear, of course, was the only motive she employed; for how could our still +carnal understandings be affected with love to God? And love to herself +was too paltry and temporary to be urged by one who knew that her life was +uncertain, and who was always trying to go down to the deepest eternal +ground and reason of everything, and take her stand upon that. So our god, +or gods rather, till we were twelve years old, were hell, the rod, the ten +commandments, and public opinion. Yet under them, not they, but something +deeper far, both in her and us, preserved us pure. Call it natural +character, conformation of the spirit,--conformation of the brain, if you +like, if you are a scientific man and a phrenologist. I never yet could +dissect and map out my own being, or my neighbour's, as you analysts do. To +me, I myself, ay, and each person round me, seem one inexplicable whole; to +take away a single faculty whereof, is to destroy the harmony, the meaning, +the life of all the rest. That there is a duality in us--a lifelong battle +between flesh and spirit--we all, alas! know well enough; but which is +flesh and which is spirit, what philosophers in these days can tell us? +Still less bad we two found out any such duality or discord in ourselves; +for we were gentle and obedient children. The pleasures of the world +did not tempt us. We did not know of their existence; and no foundlings +educated in a nunnery ever grew up in a more virginal and spotless +innocence--if ignorance be such--than did Susan and I. + +The narrowness of my sphere of observation only concentrated the faculty +into greater strength. The few natural objects which I met--and they, of +course, constituted my whole outer world (for art and poetry were tabooed +both by my rank and my mother's sectarianism, and the study of human beings +only develops itself as the boy grows into the man)--these few natural +objects, I say, I studied with intense keenness. I knew every leaf and +flower in the little front garden; every cabbage and rhubarb plant in +Battersea fields was wonderful and beautiful to me. Clouds and water I +learned to delight in, from my occasional lingerings on Battersea bridge, +and yearning westward looks toward the sun setting above rich meadows and +wooded gardens, to me a forbidden El Dorado. + +I brought home wild-flowers and chance beetles and butterflies, and pored +over them, not in the spirit of a naturalist, but of a poet. They were to +me God's angels shining in coats of mail and fairy masquerading dresses. I +envied them their beauty, their freedom. At last I made up my mind, in the +simple tenderness of a child's conscience, that it was wrong to rob them of +the liberty for which I pined,--to take them away from the beautiful broad +country whither I longed to follow them; and I used to keep them a day or +two, and then, regretfully, carry them back, and set them loose on the +first opportunity, with many compunctions of heart, when, as generally +happened, they had been starved to death in the mean time. + +They were my only recreations after the hours of the small day-school at +the neighbouring chapel, where I learnt to read, write, and sum; except, +now and then, a London walk, with my mother holding my hand tight the whole +way. She would have hoodwinked me, stopped my ears with cotton, and led +me in a string,--kind, careful soul!--if it had been reasonably safe on +a crowded pavement, so fearful was she lest I should be polluted by some +chance sight or sound of the Babylon which she feared and hated--almost as +much as she did the Bishops. + +The only books which I knew were the Pilgrim's Progress and the Bible. The +former was my Shakespeare, my Dante, my Vedas, by which I explained every +fact and phenomenon of life. London was the City of Destruction, from +which I was to flee; I was Christian; the Wicket of the Way of Life I +had strangely identified with the turnpike at Battersea-bridge end; and +the rising ground of Mortlake and Wimbledon was the Land of Beulah--the +Enchanted Mountains of the Shepherds. If I could once get there I was +saved: a carnal view, perhaps, and a childish one; but there was a dim +meaning and human reality in it nevertheless. + +As for the Bible, I knew nothing of it really, beyond the Old Testament. +Indeed, the life of Christ had little chance of becoming interesting to me. +My mother had given me formally to understand that it spoke of matters too +deep for me; that "till converted, the natural man could not understand the +things of God": and I obtained little more explanation of it from the two +unintelligible, dreary sermons to which I listened every dreary Sunday, in +terror lest a chance shuffle of my feet, or a hint of drowsiness,--natural +result of the stifling gallery and glaring windows and gas lights,--should +bring down a lecture and a punishment when I returned home. Oh, those +"sabbaths!"--days, not of rest, but utter weariness, when the beetles and +the flowers were put by, and there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity +but books of which I could not understand a word: when play, laughter, +or even a stare out of window at the sinful, merry, sabbath-breaking +promenaders, were all forbidden, as if the commandment had run, "In it thou +shalt take no manner of amusement, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter." By +what strange ascetic perversion has _that_ got to mean "keeping holy the +sabbath-day"? + +Yet there was an hour's relief in the evening, when either my mother told +us Old Testament stories, or some preacher or two came in to supper after +meeting; and I used to sit in the corner and listen to their talk; not that +I understood a word, but the mere struggle to understand--the mere watching +my mother's earnest face--my pride in the reverent flattery with which the +worthy men addressed her as "a mother in Israel," were enough to fill up +the blank for me till bed-time. + +Of "vital Christianity" I heard much; but, with all my efforts, could find +out nothing. Indeed, it did not seem interesting enough to tempt me to find +out much. It seemed a set of doctrines, believing in which was to have a +magical effect on people, by saving them from the everlasting torture due +to sins and temptations which I had never felt. Now and then, believing, +in obedience to my mother's assurances, and the solemn prayers of the +ministers about me, that I was a child of hell, and a lost and miserable +sinner, I used to have accesses of terror, and fancy that I should surely +wake next morning in everlasting flames. Once I put my finger a moment +into the fire, as certain Papists, and Protestants too, have done, not +only to themselves, but to their disciples, to see if it would be so very +dreadfully painful; with what conclusions the reader may judge.... Still, I +could not keep up the excitement. Why should I? The fear of pain is not the +fear of sin, that I know of; and, indeed, the thing was unreal altogether +in my case, and my heart, my common sense, rebelled against it again and +again; till at last I got a terrible whipping for taking my little sister's +part, and saying that if she was to die,--so gentle, and obedient, and +affectionate as she was,--God would be very unjust in sending her to +hell-fire, and that I was quite certain He would do no such thing--unless +He were the Devil: an opinion which I have since seen no reason to change. +The confusion between the King of Hell and the King of Heaven has cleared +up, thank God, since then! + +So I was whipped and put to bed--the whipping altering my secret heart just +about as much as the dread of hell-fire did. + +I speak as a Christian man--an orthodox Churchman (if you require that +shibboleth). Was I so very wrong? What was there in the idea of religion +which was represented to me at home to captivate me? What was the use +of a child's hearing of "God's great love manifested in the scheme of +redemption," when he heard, in the same breath, that the effects of that +redemption were practically confined only to one human being out of a +thousand, and that the other nine hundred and ninety-nine were lost and +damned from their birth-hour to all eternity--not only by the absolute +will and reprobation of God (though that infernal blasphemy I heard often +enough), but also, putting that out of the question, by the mere fact of +being born of Adam's race? And this to a generation to whom God's love +shines out in every tree and flower and hedge-side bird; to whom the +daily discoveries of science are revealing that love in every microscopic +animalcule which peoples the stagnant pool! This to working men, whose +craving is only for some idea which shall give equal hopes, claims, and +deliverances, to all mankind alike! This to working men, who, in the smiles +of their innocent children, see the heaven which they have lost--the +messages of baby-cherubs, made in God's own image! This to me, to whom +every butterfly, every look at my little sister, contradicted the lie! You +may say that such thoughts were too deep for a child; that I am ascribing +to my boyhood the scepticism of my manhood; but it is not so; and what went +on in my mind goes on in the minds of thousands. It is the cause of the +contempt into which not merely sectarian Protestantism, but Christianity +altogether, has fallen in the minds of the thinking workmen. Clergymen, who +anathematize us for wandering into Unitarianism--you, you have driven us +thither. You must find some explanation of the facts of Christianity more +in accordance with the truths which we do know, and will live and die for, +or you can never hope to make us Christians; or, if we do return to the +true fold, it will be as I returned, after long, miserable years of +darkling error, to a higher truth than most of you have yet learned to +preach. + +But those old Jewish heroes did fill my whole heart and soul. I learnt from +them lessons which I never wish to unlearn. Whatever else I saw about them, +this I saw,--that they were patriots, deliverers from that tyranny and +injustice from which the child's heart,--"child of the devil" though you +may call him,--instinctively, and, as I believe, by a divine inspiration, +revolts. Moses leading his people out of Egypt; Gideon, Barak, and Samson, +slaying their oppressors; David, hiding in the mountains from the tyrant, +with his little band of those who had fled from the oppressions of an +aristocracy of Nabals; Jehu, executing God's vengeance on the kings--they +were my heroes, my models; they mixed themselves up with the dim legends +about the Reformation martyrs, Cromwell and Hampden, Sidney and Monmouth, +which I had heard at my mother's knee. Not that the perennial oppression +of the masses, in all ages and countries, had yet risen on me as an +awful, torturing, fixed idea. I fancied, poor fool! that tyranny was the +exception, and not the rule. But it was the mere sense of abstract pity +and justice which was delighted in me. I thought that these were old fairy +tales, such as never need be realized again. I learnt otherwise in after +years. + +I have often wondered since, why all cannot read the same lesson as I did +in those old Hebrew Scriptures--that they, of all books in the world, +have been wrested into proofs of the divine right of kings, the eternal +necessity of slavery! But the eye only sees what it brings with it the +power of seeing. The upper classes, from their first day at school, to +their last day at college, read of nothing but the glories of Salamis and +Marathon, of freedom and of the old republics. And what comes of it? No +more than their tutors know will come of it, when they thrust into the +boys' hands books which give the lie in every page to their own political +superstitions. + +But when I was just turned of thirteen, an altogether new fairy-land was +opened to me by some missionary tracts and journals, which were lent to my +mother by the ministers. Pacific coral islands and volcanoes, cocoa-nut +groves and bananas, graceful savages with paint and feathers--what an El +Dorado! How I devoured them and dreamt of them, and went there in fancy, +and preached small sermons as I lay in my bed at night to Tahitians and New +Zealanders, though I confess my spiritual eyes were, just as my physical +eyes would have been, far more busy with the scenery than with the souls +of my audience. However, that was the place for me, I saw clearly. And one +day, I recollect it well, in the little dingy, foul, reeking, twelve foot +square back-yard, where huge smoky party-walls shut out every breath of air +and almost all the light of heaven, I had climbed up between the water-butt +and the angle of the wall for the purpose of fishing out of the dirty fluid +which lay there, crusted with soot and alive with insects, to be renewed +only three times in the seven days, some of the great larvæ and kicking +monsters which made up a large item in my list of wonders: all of a sudden +the horror of the place came over me; those grim prison-walls above, with +their canopy of lurid smoke; the dreary, sloppy, broken pavement; the +horrible stench of the stagnant cesspools; the utter want of form, colour, +life, in the whole place, crushed me down, without my being able to analyse +my feelings as I can now; and then came over me that dream of Pacific +Islands, and the free, open sea; and I slid down from my perch, and +bursting into tears threw myself upon my knees in the court, and prayed +aloud to God to let me be a missionary. + +Half fearfully I let out my wishes to my mother when she came home. She +gave me no answer; but, as I found out afterwards,--too late, alas! for +her, if not for me,--she, like Mary, had "laid up all these things, and +treasured them in her heart." + +You may guess, then, my delight when, a few days afterwards, I heard that a +real live missionary was coming to take tea with us. A man who had actually +been in New Zealand!--the thought was rapture. I painted him to myself over +and over again; and when, after the first burst of fancy, I recollected +that he might possibly not have adopted the native costume of that +island, or, if he had, that perhaps it would look too strange for him to +wear it about London, I settled within myself that he was to be a tall, +venerable-looking man, like the portraits of old Puritan divines which +adorned our day-room; and as I had heard that "he was powerful in prayer," +I adorned his right hand with that mystic weapon "all-prayer," with +which Christian, when all other means have failed, finally vanquishes +the fiend--which instrument, in my mind, was somewhat after the model +of an infernal sort of bill or halbert--all hooks, edges, spikes, and +crescents--which I had passed, shuddering, once, in the hand of an old suit +of armour in Wardour Street. + +He came--and with him the two ministers who often drank tea with my mother; +both of whom, as they played some small part in the drama of my after-life, +I may as well describe here. The elder was a little, sleek, silver-haired +old man, with a blank, weak face, just like a white rabbit. He loved me, +and I loved him too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me +and Susan. Had his head been equal to his heart!--but what has been was +to be--and the dissenting clergy, with a few noble exceptions among the +Independents, are not the strong men of the day--none know that better than +the workmen. The old man's name was Bowyer. The other, Mr. Wigginton, was a +younger man; tall, grim, dark, bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating +suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his +ears. He preached "higher doctrine," _i.e._, more fatalist and antinomian +than his gentler colleague,--and, having also a stentorian voice, was much +the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him--and if any man ever +deserved hatred, he did. + +Well, they came. My heart was in my mouth as I opened the door to them, and +sank back again to the very lowest depths of my inner man when my eyes fell +on the face and figure of the missionary--a squat, red-faced, pig-eyed, +low-browed man, with great soft lips that opened back to his very ears: +sensuality, conceit, and cunning marked on every feature--an innate +vulgarity, from which the artisan and the child recoil with an instinct as +true, perhaps truer, than that of the courtier, showing itself in every +tone and motion--I shrank into a corner, so crestfallen that I could not +even exert myself to hand round the bread and butter, for which I got duly +scolded afterwards. Oh! that man!--how he bawled and contradicted, and laid +down the law, and spoke to my mother in a fondling, patronizing way, which +made me, I knew not why, boil over with jealousy and indignation. How he +filled his teacup half full of the white sugar to buy which my mother had +curtailed her yesterday's dinner--how he drained the few remaining drops +of the threepennyworth of cream, with which Susan was stealing off to keep +it as an unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast the next morning--how +he talked of the natives, not as St. Paul might of his converts, but as a +planter might of his slaves; overlaying all his unintentional confessions +of his own greed and prosperity, with cant, flimsy enough for even a boy to +see through, while his eyes were not blinded with the superstition that a +man must be pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with a jumble of +old English picked out of our translation of the New Testament. Such was +the man I saw. I don't deny that all are not like him. I believe there are +noble men of all denominations, doing their best according to their light, +all over the world; but such was the one I saw--and the men who were sent +home to plead the missionary cause, whatever the men may be like who stay +behind and work, are, from my small experience, too often such. It appears +to me to be the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries, go +simply because they are men of such inferior powers and attainments that if +they stayed in England they would starve. + +Three parts of his conversation, after all, was made up of abuse of the +missionaries of the Church of England, not for doing nothing, but for being +so much more successful than his own sect; accusing them, in the same +breath, of being just of the inferior type of which he was himself, and +also of being mere University fine gentlemen. Really, I do not wonder, upon +his own showing, at the savages preferring them to him; and I was pleased +to hear the old white-headed minister gently interpose at the end of one of +his tirades--"We must not be jealous, my brother, if the Establishment has +discovered what we, I hope, shall find out some day, that it is not wise to +draft our missionaries from the offscouring of the ministry, and serve God +with that which costs us nothing except the expense of providing for them +beyond seas." + +There was somewhat of a roguish twinkle in the old man's eye as he said it, +which emboldened me to whisper a question to him. + +"Why is it, Sir, that in olden times the heathens used to crucify the +missionaries and burn them, and now they give them beautiful farms, and +build them houses, and carry them about on their backs?" + +The old man seemed a little puzzled, and so did the company, to whom he +smilingly retailed my question. + +As nobody seemed inclined to offer a solution, I ventured one myself. + +"Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used to be?" + +"The heart of man," answered the tall, dark minister, "is, and ever was, +equally at enmity with God." + +"Then, perhaps," I ventured again, "what the missionaries preach now is not +quite the same as what the missionaries used to preach in St. Paul's time, +and so the heathens are not so angry at it?" + +My mother looked thunder at me, and so did all except my white-headed +friend, who said, gently enough, + +"It may be that the child's words come from God." + +Whether they did or not, the child took very good care to speak no more +words till he was alone with his mother; and then finished off that +disastrous evening by a punishment for the indecency of saying, before his +little sister, that he thought it "a great pity the missionaries taught +black people to wear ugly coats and trousers; they must have looked so +much handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and strings of +shells." + +So the missionary dream died out of me, by a foolish and illogical +antipathy enough; though, after all, it was a child of my imagination only, +not of my heart; and the fancy, having bred it, was able to kill it also. +And David became my ideal. To be a shepherd-boy, and sit among beautiful +mountains, and sing hymns of my own making, and kill lions and bears, +with now and then the chance of a stray giant--what a glorious life! And +if David slew giants with a sling and a stone, why should not I?--at all +events, one ought to know how; so I made a sling out of an old garter and +some string, and began to practise in the little back-yard. But my first +shot broke a neighbour's window, value sevenpence, and the next flew +back in my face, and cut my head open; so I was sent supperless to bed +for a week, till the sevenpence had been duly saved out of my hungry +stomach--and, on the whole, I found the hymn-writing side of David's +character the more feasible; so I tried, and with much brains-beating, +committed the following lines to a scrap of dirty paper. And it was +strangely significant, that in this, my first attempt, there was an +instinctive denial of the very doctrine of "particular redemption," which +I had been hearing all my life, and an instinctive yearning after the +very Being in whom I had been told I had "no part nor lot" till I was +"converted." Here they are. I am not ashamed to call them--doggerel though +they be--an inspiration from Him of whom they speak. If not from Him, good +readers, from whom? + + Jesus, He loves one and all; + Jesus, He loves children small; + Their souls are sitting round His feet, + On high, before His mercy-seat. + + When on earth He walked in shame, + Children small unto Him came; + At His feet they knelt and prayed, + On their heads His hands He laid. + + Came a spirit on them then, + Greater than of mighty men; + A spirit gentle, meek, and mild, + A spirit good for king and child. + + Oh! that spirit give to me, + Jesus, Lord, where'er I be! + So-- + +But I did not finish them, not seeing very clearly what to do with that +spirit when I obtained it; for, indeed, it seemed a much finer thing to +fight material Apollyons with material swords of iron, like my friend +Christian, or to go bear and lion hunting with David, than to convert +heathens by meekness--at least, if true meekness was at all like that of +the missionary whom I had lately seen. + +I showed the verses in secret to my little sister. My mother heard us +singing them together, and extorted, grimly enough, a confession of the +authorship. I expected to be punished for them (I was accustomed weekly to +be punished for all sorts of deeds and words, of the harmfulness of which +I had not a notion). It was, therefore, an agreeable surprise when the old +minister, the next Sunday evening, patted my head, and praised me for them. + +"A hopeful sign of young grace, brother," said he to the dark tall man. +"May we behold here an infant Timothy!" + +"Bad doctrine, brother, in that first line--bad doctrine, which I am +sure he did not learn from our excellent sister here. Remember, my boy, +henceforth, that Jesus does _not_ love one and all--not that I am angry +with you. The carnal mind cannot be expected to understand divine things, +any more than the beasts that perish. Nevertheless, the blessed message of +the Gospel stands true, that Christ loves none but His Bride, the Church. +His merits, my poor child, extend to none but the elect. Ah! my dear sister +Locke, how delightful to think of the narrow way of discriminating grace! +How it enhances the believer's view of his own exceeding privileges, to +remember that there be few that be saved!" + +I said nothing. I thought myself only too lucky to escape so well from the +danger of having done anything out of my own head. But somehow Susan and I +never altered it when we sang it to ourselves. + + * * * * * + +I thought it necessary, for the sake of those who might read my story, to +string together these few scattered recollections of my boyhood,--to give, +as it were, some sample of the cotyledon leaves of my young life-plant, and +of the soil in which it took root, ere it was transplanted--but I will not +forestall my sorrows. After all, they have been but types of the woes of +thousands who "die and give no sign." Those to whom the struggles of every, +even the meanest, human being are scenes of an awful drama, every incident +of which is to be noted with reverent interest, will not find them void of +meaning; while the life which opens in my next chapter is, perhaps, full +enough of mere dramatic interest (and whose life is not, were it but truly +written?) to amuse merely as a novel. Ay, grim and real is the action and +suffering which begins with my next page,--as you yourself would have +found, high-born reader (if such chance to light upon this story), had +you found yourself at fifteen, after a youth of convent-like seclusion, +settled, apparently for life--in a tailor's workshop. + +Ay--laugh!--we tailors can quote poetry as well as make your court-dresses: + + You sit in a cloud and sing, like pictured angels, + And say the world runs smooth--while right below + Welters the black fermenting heap of griefs + Whereon your state is built.... + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE TAILOR'S WORKROOM. + + +Have you done laughing! Then I will tell you how the thing came to pass. + +My father had a brother, who had steadily risen in life, in proportion as +my father fell. They had both begun life in a grocer's shop. My father +saved enough to marry, when of middle age, a woman of his own years, and +set up a little shop, where there were far too many such already, in the +hope--to him, as to the rest of the world, quite just and innocent--of +drawing away as much as possible of his neighbours' custom. He failed, +died--as so many small tradesmen do--of bad debts and a broken heart, and +left us beggars. His brother, more prudent, had, in the meantime, risen to +be foreman; then he married, on the strength of his handsome person, his +master's blooming widow; and rose and rose, year by year, till, at the +time of which I speak, he was owner of a first-rate grocery establishment +in the City, and a pleasant villa near Herne Hill, and had a son, a year +or two older than myself, at King's College, preparing for Cambridge and +the Church--that being now-a-days the approved method of converting a +tradesman's son into a gentleman,--whereof let artisans, and gentlemen +also, take note. + +My aristocratic readers--if I ever get any, which I pray God I may--may +be surprised at so great an inequality of fortune between two cousins; +but the thing is common in our class. In the higher ranks, a difference +in income implies none in education or manners, and the poor "gentleman" +is a fit companion for dukes and princes--thanks to the old usages of +Norman chivalry, which after all were a democratic protest against the +sovereignty, if not of rank, at least of money. The knight, however +penniless, was the prince's equal, even his superior, from whose hands he +must receive knighthood; and the "squire of low degree," who honourably +earned his spurs, rose also into that guild, whose qualifications, however +barbaric, were still higher ones than any which the pocket gives. But in +the commercial classes money most truly and fearfully "makes the man." A +difference in income, as you go lower, makes more and more difference in +the supply of the common necessaries of life; and worse--in education and +manners, in all which polishes the man, till you may see often, as in +my case, one cousin a Cambridge undergraduate, and the other a tailor's +journeyman. + +My uncle one day came down to visit us, resplendent in a black velvet +waistcoat, thick gold chain, and acres of shirt-front; and I and Susan were +turned to feed on our own curiosity and awe in the back-yard, while he and +my mother were closeted together for an hour or so in the living-room. When +he was gone, my mother called me in; and with eyes which would have been +tearful had she allowed herself such a weakness before us, told me very +solemnly and slowly, as if to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter, +that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the next day. + +And an awful step it was in her eyes, as she laid her hands on my head and +murmured to herself, "Behold, I send you forth as a lamb in the midst of +wolves. Be ye, therefore, wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." And +then, rising hastily to conceal her own emotion, fled upstairs, where +we could hear her throw herself on her knees by the bedside, and sob +piteously. + +That evening was spent dolefully enough, in a sermon of warnings against +all manner of sins and temptations, the very names of which I had never +heard, but to which, as she informed me, I was by my fallen nature +altogether prone: and right enough was she in so saying, though as often +happens, the temptations from which I was in real danger were just the ones +of which she had no notion--fighting more or less extinct Satans, as Mr. +Carlyle says, and quite unconscious of the real, modern, man-devouring +Satan close at her elbow. + +To me, in spite of all the terror which she tried to awaken in me, the +change was not unwelcome; at all events, it promised me food for my eyes +and my ears,--some escape from the narrow cage in which, though I hardly +dare confess it to myself, I was beginning to pine. Little I dreamt to what +a darker cage I was to be translated! Not that I accuse my uncle of neglect +or cruelty, though the thing was altogether of his commanding. He was as +generous to us as society required him to be. We were entirely dependent on +him, as my mother told me then for the first time, for support. And had he +not a right to dispose of my person, having bought it by an allowance to my +mother of five-and-twenty pounds a year? I did not forget that fact; the +thought of my dependence on him rankled in me, till it almost bred hatred +in me to a man who had certainly never done or meant anything to me but in +kindness. For what could he make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale, +consumptive, rickety, weakly boy, all forehead and no muscle--have not +clothes and shoes been from time immemorial the appointed work of such? The +fact that that weakly frame is generally compensated by a proportionally +increased activity of brain, is too unimportant to enter into the +calculations of the great King Laissez-faire. Well, my dear Society, it is +you that suffer for the mistake, after all, more than we. If you do tether +your cleverest artisans on tailors' shopboards and cobblers' benches, +and they--as sedentary folk will--fall a thinking, and come to strange +conclusions thereby, they really ought to be much more thankful to you than +you are to them. If Thomas Cooper had passed his first five-and-twenty +years at the plough tail instead of the shoemaker's awl, many words would +have been left unsaid which, once spoken, working men are not likely to +forget. + +With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's side next day to Mr. +Smith's shop, in a street off Piccadilly; and stood by her side, just +within the door, waiting till some one would condescend to speak to us, and +wondering when the time would come when I, like the gentleman who skipped +up and down the shop, should shine glorious in patent-leather boots, and a +blue satin tie sprigged with gold. + +Two personages, both equally magnificent, stood talking with their backs +to us; and my mother, in doubt, like myself, as to which of them was the +tailor, at last summoned up courage to address the wrong one, by asking if +he were Mr. Smith. + +The person addressed answered by a most polite smile and bow, and assured +her that he had not that honour; while the other he-he'ed, evidently a +little flattered by the mistake, and then uttered in a tremendous voice +these words: + +"I have nothing for you, my good woman--go. Mr. Elliot! how did you come to +allow these people to get into the establishment?" + +"My name is Locke, sir, and I was to bring my son here this morning." + +"Oh--ah!--Mr. Elliot, see to these persons. As I was saying, my lard, +the crimson velvet suit, about thirty-five guineas. By-the-by, that coat +ours? I thought so--idea grand and light--masses well broken--very fine +chiaroscuro about the whole--an aristocratic wrinkle just above the +hips--which I flatter myself no one but myself and my friend Mr. Cooke +really do understand. The vapid smoothness of the door dummy, my lard, +should be confined to the regions of the Strand. Mr. Elliot, where are you? +Just be so good as to show his lardship that lovely new thing in drab and +_blue foncé_. Ah! your lardship can't wait.--Now, my good woman, is this +the young man?" + +"Yes," said my mother: "and--and--God deal so with you, sir, as you deal +with the widow and the orphan." + +"Oh--ah--that will depend very much, I should say, on how the widow and +the orphan deal with me. Mr. Elliot, take this person into the office +and transact the little formalities with her, Jones, take the young man +up-stairs to the work-room." + +I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we +emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. +I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to +work--perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the +combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet +sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new +cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of +thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look +of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight +closed to keep out the cold winter air; and the condensed breath ran in +streams down the panes, chequering the dreary outlook of chimney-tops and +smoke. The conductor handed me over to one of the men. + +"Here, Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him +next you, and prick him up with your needle if he shirks." + +He disappeared down the trap-door, and mechanically, as if in a dream, +I sat down by the man and listened to his instructions, kindly enough +bestowed. But I did not remain in peace two minutes. A burst of chatter +rose as the foreman vanished, and a tall, bloated, sharp-nosed young man +next me bawled in my ear,-- + +"I say, young'un, fork out the tin and pay your footing at Conscrumption +Hospital." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Aint he just green?--Down with the stumpy--a tizzy for a pot of +half-and-half." + +"I never drink beer." + +"Then never do," whispered the man at my side; "as sure as hell's hell, +it's your only chance." + +There was a fierce, deep earnestness in the tone which made me look up at +the speaker, but the other instantly chimed in-- + +"Oh, yer don't, don't yer, my young Father Mathy? then yer'll soon learn it +here if yer want to keep yer victuals down." + +"And I have promised to take my wages home to my mother." + +"Oh criminy! hark to that, my coves! here's a chap as is going to take the +blunt home to his mammy." + +"T'aint much of it the old'un'll see," said another. "Ven yer pockets it +at the Cock and Bottle, my kiddy, yer won't find much of it left o' Sunday +mornings." + +"Don't his mother know he's out?" asked another, "and won't she know it-- + + "Ven he's sitting in his glory + Half-price at the Victory. + +"Oh! no, ve never mentions her--her name is never heard. Certainly not, by +no means. Why should it?" + +"Well, if yer won't stand a pot," quoth the tall man, "I will, that's all, +and blow temperance. 'A short life and a merry one,' says the tailor-- + + "The ministers talk a great deal about port, + And they makes Cape wine very dear, + But blow their hi's if ever they tries + To deprive a poor cove of his beer. + +"Here, Sam, run to the Cock and Bottle for a pot of half-and-half to my +score." + +A thin, pale lad jumped up and vanished, while my tormentor turned to me: + +"I say, young'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our +neighbours?" + +"I shouldn't have thought so," answered I with a _naïveté_ which raised a +laugh, and dashed the tall man for a moment. + +"Yer don't? then I'll tell yer. A cause we're a top of the house in the +first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer +worked in the room below. Aint that logic and science, Orator?" appealing +to Crossthwaite. + +"Why?" asked I. + +"A cause you get all the other floors' stinks up here as well as your +own. Concentrated essence of man's flesh, is this here as you're a +breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, because of the damp. +Ground-floor's Fever Ward--them as don't get typhus gets dysentery, and +them as don't get dysentery gets typhus--your nose'd tell yer why if you +opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now +through the cracks in the boards, a puffing away like a nest of young +locomotives? And this here most august and upper-crust cockloft is the +Conscrumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds +to expectorate--spittoons, as you see, perwided free gracious for +nothing--fined a kivarten if you spits on the floor-- + + "Then your cheeks they grows red, and your nose it grows thin, + And your bones they stick out, till they comes through your skin: + +"and then, when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering bare +backs of the hairystocracy-- + + "Die, die, die, + Away you fly, + Your soul is in the sky! + +"as the hinspired Shakspeare wittily remarks." + +And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended +to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while +poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees. + +"Fine him a pot!" roared one, "for talking about kicking the bucket. He's +a nice young man to keep a cove's spirits up, and talk about 'a short life +and a merry one.' Here comes the heavy. Hand it here to take the taste of +that fellow's talk out of my mouth." + +"Well, my young'un," recommenced my tormentor, "and how do you like your +company?" + +"Leave the boy alone," growled Crossthwaite; "don't you see he's crying?" + +"Is that anything good to eat? Give me some on it if it is--it'll save me +washing my face." And he took hold of my hair and pulled my head back. + +"I'll tell you what, Jemmy Downes," said Crossthwaite, in a voice which +made him draw back, "if you don't drop that, I'll give you such a taste of +my tongue as shall turn you blue." + +"You'd better try it on then. Do--only just now--if you please." + +"Be quiet, you fool!" said another. "You're a pretty fellow to chaff the +orator. He'll slang you up the chimney afore you can get your shoes on." + +"Fine him a kivarten for quarrelling," cried another; and the bully +subsided into a minute's silence, after a _sotto voce_--"Blow temperance, +and blow all Chartists, say I!" and then delivered himself of his feelings +in a doggerel song: + + "Some folks leads coves a dance, + With their pledge of temperance, + And their plans for donkey sociation; + And their pockets full they crams + By their patriotic flams, + And then swears 'tis for the good of the nation. + + "But I don't care two inions + For political opinions, + While I can stand my heavy and my quartern; + For to drown dull care within, + In baccy, beer, and gin, + Is the prime of a working-tailor's fortin! + +"There's common sense for yer now; hand the pot here." + +I recollect nothing more of that day, except that I bent myself to my work +with assiduity enough to earn praises from Crossthwaite. It was to be done, +and I did it. The only virtue I ever possessed (if virtue it be) is the +power of absorbing my whole heart and mind in the pursuit of the moment, +however dull or trivial, if there be good reason why it should be pursued +at all. + +I owe, too, an apology to my readers for introducing all this ribaldry. God +knows, it is as little to my taste as it can be to theirs, but the thing +exists; and those who live, if not by, yet still besides such a state of +things, ought to know what the men are like to whose labour, ay, lifeblood, +they own their luxuries. They are "their brothers' keepers," let them deny +it as they will. Thank God, many are finding that out; and the morals of +the working tailors, as well as of other classes of artisans, are rapidly +improving: a change which has been brought about partly by the wisdom +and kindness of a few master tailors, who have built workshops fit for +human beings, and have resolutely stood out against the iniquitous and +destructive alterations in the system of employment. Among them I may, and +will, whether they like it or not, make honourable mention of Mr. Willis, +of St. James's Street, and Mr. Stultz, of Bond Street. + +But nine-tenths of the improvement has been owing, not to the masters, but +to the men themselves; and who among them, my aristocratic readers, do you +think, have been the great preachers and practisers of temperance, thrift, +charity, self-respect, and education. Who?--shriek not in your Belgravian +saloons--the Chartists; the communist Chartists: upon whom you and your +venal press heap every kind of cowardly execration and ribald slander. You +have found out many things since Peterloo; add that fact to the number. + +It may seem strange that I did not tell my mother into what a pandemonium +I had fallen, and got her to deliver me; but a delicacy, which was not +all evil, kept me back; I shrank from seeming to dislike to earn my daily +bread, and still more from seeming to object to what she had appointed for +me. Her will had been always law; it seemed a deadly sin to dispute it. I +took for granted, too, that she knew what the place was like, and that, +therefore, it must be right for me. And when I came home at night, and +got back to my beloved missionary stories, I gathered materials enough +to occupy my thoughts during the next day's work, and make me blind and +deaf to all the evil around me. My mother, poor dear creature, would have +denounced my day-dreams sternly enough, had she known of their existence; +but were they not holy angels from heaven? guardians sent by that Father, +whom I had been taught _not_ to believe in, to shield my senses from +pollution? + +I was ashamed, too, to mention to my mother the wickedness which I saw +and heard. With the delicacy of an innocent boy, I almost imputed the +very witnessing of it as a sin to myself; and soon I began to be ashamed +of more than the mere sitting by and hearing. I found myself gradually +learning slang-insolence, laughing at coarse jokes, taking part in angry +conversations; my moral tone was gradually becoming lower; but yet the +habit of prayer remained, and every night at my bedside, when I prayed to +"be converted and made a child of God," I prayed that the same mercy might +be extended to my fellow-workmen, "if they belonged to the number of the +elect." Those prayers may have been answered in a wider and deeper sense +than I then thought of. + +But, altogether, I felt myself in a most distracted, rudderless state. My +mother's advice I felt daily less and less inclined to ask. A gulf was +opening between us; we were moving in two different worlds, and she saw +it, and imputed it to me as a sin; and was the more cold to me by day, and +prayed for me (as I knew afterwards) the more passionately while I slept. +But help or teacher I had none. I knew not that I had a Father in heaven. +How could He be my Father till I was converted? I was a child of the Devil, +they told me; and now and then I felt inclined to take them at their word, +and behave like one. No sympathizing face looked on me out of the wide +heaven--off the wide earth, none. I was all boiling with new hopes, new +temptations, new passions, new sorrows, and "I looked to the right hand and +to the left, and no man cared for my soul." + +I had felt myself from the first strangely drawn towards Crossthwaite, +carefully as he seemed to avoid me, except to give me business directions +in the workroom. He alone had shown me any kindness; and he, too, alone was +untainted with the sin around him. Silent, moody, and preoccupied, he was +yet the king of the room. His opinion was always asked, and listened to. +His eye always cowed the ribald and the blasphemer; his songs, when he +rarely broke out into merriment, were always rapturously applauded. Men +hated, and yet respected him. I shrank from him at first, when I heard +him called a Chartist; for my dim notions of that class were, that they +were a very wicked set of people, who wanted to kill all the soldiers and +policemen and respectable people, and rob all the shops of their contents. +But, Chartist or none, Crossthwaite fascinated me. I often found myself +neglecting my work to study his face. I liked him, too, because he was as I +was--small, pale, and weakly. He might have been five-and-twenty; but his +looks, like those of too many a working man, were rather those of a man +of forty. Wild grey eyes gleamed out from under huge knitted brows, and a +perpendicular wall of brain, too large for his puny body. He was not only, +I soon discovered, a water-drinker, but a strict "vegetarian" also; to +which, perhaps, he owed a great deal of the almost preternatural clearness, +volubility, and sensitiveness of his mind. But whether from his ascetic +habits, or the un-healthiness of his trade, the marks of ill-health were +upon him; and his sallow cheek, and ever-working lip, proclaimed too +surely-- + + The fiery soul which, working out its way, + Fretted the pigmy body to decay; + And o'er informed the tenement of clay. + +I longed to open my heart to him. Instinctively I felt that he was a +kindred spirit. Often, turning round suddenly in the workroom, I caught him +watching me with an expression which seemed to say, "Poor boy, and art thou +too one of us? Hast thou too to fight with poverty and guidelessness, and +the cravings of an unsatisfied intellect, as I have done!" But when I tried +to speak to him earnestly, his manner was peremptory and repellent. It was +well for me that so it was--well for me, I see now, that it was not from +him my mind received the first lessons in self-development. For guides did +come to me in good time, though not such, perhaps, as either my mother or +my readers would have chosen for me. + +My great desire now was to get knowledge. By getting that I fancied, as +most self-educated men are apt to do, 1 should surely get wisdom. Books, I +thought, would tell me all I needed. But where to get the books? And which? +I had exhausted our small stock at home; I was sick and tired, without +knowing why, of their narrow conventional view of everything. After all, +I had been reading them all along, not for their doctrines but for their +facts, and knew not where to find more, except in forbidden paths. I dare +not ask my mother for books, for I dare not confess to her that religious +ones were just what I did not want; and all history, poetry, science, I had +been accustomed to hear spoken of as "carnal learning, human philosophy," +more or less diabolic and ruinous to the soul. So, as usually happens +in this life--"By the law was the knowledge of sin"--and unnatural +restrictions on the development of the human spirit only associated with +guilt of conscience, what ought to have been an innocent and necessary +blessing. + +My poor mother, not singular in her mistake, had sent me forth, out of an +unconscious paradise into the evil world, without allowing me even the sad +strength which comes from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; +she expected in me the innocence of the dove, as if that was possible on +such an earth as this, without the wisdom of the serpent to support it. She +forbade me strictly to stop and look into the windows of print shops, and +I strictly obeyed her. But she forbade me, too, to read any book which I +had not first shown her; and that restriction, reasonable enough in the +abstract, practically meant, in the case of a poor boy like myself, reading +no books at all. And then came my first act of disobedience, the parent of +many more. Bitterly have I repented it, and bitterly been punished. Yet, +strange contradiction! I dare not wish it undone. But such is the great law +of life. Punished for our sins we surely are; and yet how often they become +our blessings, teaching us that which nothing else can teach us! Nothing +else? One says so. Rich parents, I suppose, say so, when they send their +sons to public schools "to learn life." We working men have too often no +other teacher than our own errors. But surely, surely, the rich ought to +have been able to discover some mode of education in which knowledge may be +acquired without the price of conscience, Yet they have not; and we must +not complain of them for not giving such a one to the working man when they +have not yet even given it to their own children. + +In a street through which I used to walk homeward was an old book shop, +piled and fringed outside and in with books of every age, size, and colour. +And here I at last summoned courage to stop, and timidly and stealthily +taking out some volume whose title attracted me, snatch hastily a few pages +and hasten on, half fearful of being called on to purchase, half ashamed of +a desire which I fancied every one else considered as unlawful as my mother +did. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find the same volume several days +running, and to take up the subject where I had left it off; and thus I +contrived to hurry through a great deal of "Childe Harold," "Lara," and the +"Corsair"--a new world of wonders to me. They fed, those poems, both my +health and my diseases; while they gave me, little of them as I could +understand, a thousand new notions about scenery and man, a sense of poetic +melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown. They chimed in with all +my discontent, my melancholy, my thirst after any life of action and +excitement, however frivolous, insane, or even worse. I forgot the +Corsair's sinful trade in his free and daring life; rather, I honestly +eliminated the bad element--in which, God knows, I took no delight--and +kept the good one. However that might be, the innocent--guilty pleasure +grew on me day by day. Innocent, because human--guilty, because +disobedient. But have I not paid the penalty? + +One evening, however, I fell accidentally on a new book--"The Life and +Poems of J. Bethune." I opened the story of his life--became interested, +absorbed--and there I stood, I know not how long, on the greasy pavement, +heedless of the passers who thrust me right and left, reading by the +flaring gas-light that sad history of labour, sorrow, and death.--How +the Highland cotter, in spite of disease, penury, starvation itself, and +the daily struggle to earn his bread by digging and ditching, educated +himself--how he toiled unceasingly with his hands--how he wrote his poems +in secret on dirty scraps of paper and old leaves of books--how thus he +wore himself out, manful and godly, "bating not a jot of heart or hope," +till the weak flesh would bear no more; and the noble spirit, unrecognized +by the lord of the soil, returned to God who gave it. I seemed to see in +his history a sad presage of my own. If he, stronger, more self-restrained, +more righteous far than ever I could be, had died thus unknown, unassisted, +in the stern battle with social disadvantages, what must be my lot? + +And tears of sympathy, rather than of selfish fear, fell fast upon the +book. + +A harsh voice from the inner darkness of the shop startled me. + +"Hoot, laddie, ye'll better no spoil my books wi' greeting ower them." + +I replaced the book hastily, and was hurrying on, but the same voice called +me back in a more kindly tone. + +"Stop a wee, my laddie. I'm no angered wi' ye. Come in, and we'll just ha' +a bit crack thegither." + +I went in, for there was a geniality in the tone to which I was +unaccustomed, and something whispered to me the hope of an adventure, as +indeed it proved to be, if an event deserves that name which decided the +course of my whole destiny. + +"What war ye greeting about, then? What was the book?" + +"'Bethune's Life and Poems,' sir," I said. "And certainly they did affect +me very much." + +"Affect ye? Ah, Johnnie Bethune, puir fellow! Ye maunna take on about sic +like laddies, or ye'll greet your e'en out o' your head. It's mony a braw +man beside Johnnie Bethune has gane Johnnie-Bethune's gate." + +Though unaccustomed to the Scotch accent, I could make out enough of +this speech to be in nowise consoled by it. But the old man turned the +conversation by asking me abruptly my name, and trade, and family. + +"Hum, hum, widow, eh? puir body! work at Smith's shop, eh? Ye'll ken John +Crossthwaite, then? ay? hum, hum; an' ye're desirous o' reading books? vara +weel--let's see your cawpabilities." + +And he pulled me into the dim light of the little back window, shoved back +his spectacles, and peering at me from underneath them, began, to my great +astonishment, to feel my head all over. + +"Hum, hum, a vara gude forehead--vara gude indeed. Causative organs large, +perceptive ditto. Imagination superabundant--mun be heeded. Benevolence, +conscientiousness, ditto, ditto. Caution--no that large--might be +developed," with a quiet chuckle, "under a gude Scot's education. Just turn +your head into profile, laddie. Hum, hum. Back o' the head a'thegither +defective. Firmness sma'--love of approbation unco big. Beware o' leeing, +as ye live; ye'll need it. Philoprogenitiveness gude. Ye'll be fond o' +bairns, I'm guessing?" + +"Of what?" + +"Children, laddie,--children." + +"Very," answered I, in utter dismay at what seemed to me a magical process +for getting at all my secret failings. + +"Hum, hum! Amative and combative organs sma'--a general want o' healthy +animalism, as my freen' Mr. Deville wad say. And ye want to read books?" + +I confessed my desire, without, alas! confessing that my mother had +forbidden it. + +"Vara weel; then books I'll lend ye, after I've had a crack wi' +Crossthwaite aboot ye, gin I find his opinion o' ye satisfactory. Come +to me the day after to-morrow. An' mind, here are my rules:--a' damage +done to a book to be paid for, or na mair books lent; ye'll mind to +take no books without leave; specially ye'll mind no to read in bed o' +nights,--industrious folks ought to be sleeping' betimes, an' I'd no be a +party to burning puir weans in their beds; and lastly, ye'll observe not to +read mair than five books at once." + +I assured him that I thought such a thing impossible; but he smiled in his +saturnine way, and said-- + +"We'll see this day fortnight. Now, then, I've observed ye for a month past +over that aristocratic Byron's poems. And I'm willing to teach the young +idea how to shoot--but no to shoot itself; so ye'll just leave alane that +vinegary, soul-destroying trash, and I'll lend ye, gin I hear a gude report +of ye, 'The Paradise Lost,' o' John Milton--a gran' classic model; and +for the doctrine o't, it's just aboot as gude as ye'll hear elsewhere the +noo. So gang your gate, and tell John Crossthwaite, privately, auld Sandy +Mackaye wad like to see him the morn's night." + +I went home in wonder and delight. Books! books! books! I should have my +fill of them at last. And when I said my prayers at night, I thanked God +for this unexpected boon; and then remembered that my mother had forbidden +it. That thought checked the thanks, but not the pleasure. Oh, parents! are +there not real sins enough in the world already, without your defiling it, +over and above, by inventing new ones? + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +SANDY MACKAYE. + + +That day fortnight came,--and the old Scotchman's words came true. Four +books of his I had already, and I came in to borrow a fifth; whereon he +began with a solemn chuckle: + +"Eh, laddie, laddie, I've been treating ye as the grocers do their new +prentices. They first gie the boys three days' free warren among the figs +and the sugar-candy, and they get scunnered wi' sweets after that. Noo, +then, my lad, ye've just been reading four books in three days--and here's +a fifth. Ye'll no open this again." + +"Oh!" I cried, piteously enough, "just let me finish what I am reading. I'm +in the middle of such a wonderful account of the Hornitos of Jurullo." + +"Hornets or wasps, a swarm o' them ye're like to have at this rate; and +a very bad substitute ye'll find them for the Attic bee. Now tak' tent. +I'm no in the habit of speaking without deliberation, for it saves a man +a great deal of trouble in changing his mind. If ye canna traduce to me +a page o' Virgil by this day three months, ye read no more o' my books. +Desultory reading is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with self-restraint +and method, my man, gin ye intend to gie yoursel' a liberal education. So +I'll just mak' you a present of an auld Latin grammar, and ye maun begin +where your betters ha' begun before you." + +"But who will teach me Latin?" + +"Hoot, man! who'll teach a man anything except himsel'? It's only +gentlefolks and puir aristocrat bodies that go to be spoilt wi' tutors and +pedagogues, cramming and loading them wi' knowledge, as ye'd load a gun, to +shoot it all out again, just as it went down, in a college examination, and +forget all aboot it after." + +"Ah!" I sighed, "if I could have gone to college!" + +"What for, then? My father was a Hieland farmer, and yet he was a weel +learned man: and 'Sandy, my lad,' he used to say, 'a man kens just as +much as he's taught himsel', and na mair. So get wisdom; and wi' all your +getting, get understanding.' And so I did. And mony's the Greek exercise +I've written in the cowbyres. And mony's the page o' Virgil, too, I've +turned into good Dawric Scotch to ane that's dead and gane, poor hizzie, +sitting under the same plaid, with the sheep feeding round us, up among +the hills, looking out ower the broad blue sea, and the wee haven wi' the +fishing cobles--" + +There was a long solemn pause. I cannot tell why, but I loved the man from +that moment; and I thought, too, that he began to love me. Those few words +seemed a proof of confidence, perhaps all the deeper, because accidental +and unconscious. + +I took the Virgil which he lent me, with Hamilton's literal translation +between the lines, and an old tattered Latin grammar; I felt myself quite +a learned man--actually the possessor of a Latin book! I regarded as +something almost miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition. +Not that I was consciously, much less selfishly, ambitious. I had no idea +as yet to be anything but a tailor to the end; to make clothes--perhaps in +a less infernal atmosphere--but still to make clothes and live thereby. I +did not suspect that I possessed powers above the mass. My intense longing +after knowledge had been to me like a girl's first love--a thing to be +concealed from every eye--to be looked at askance even by myself, delicious +as it was, with holy shame and trembling. And thus it was not cowardice +merely, but natural modesty, which put me on a hundred plans of concealing +my studies from my mother, and even from my sister. + +I slept in a little lean-to garret at the back of the house, some ten feet +long by six wide. I could just stand upright against the inner wall, while +the roof on the other side ran down to the floor. There was no fireplace in +it, or any means of ventilation. No wonder I coughed all night accordingly, +and woke about two every morning with choking throat and aching head. My +mother often said that the room was "too small for a Christian to sleep in, +but where could she get a better?" + +Such was my only study. I could not use it as such, however, at night +without discovery; for my mother carefully looked in every evening, to +see that my candle was out. But when my kind cough woke me, I rose, and +creeping like a mouse about the room--for my mother and sister slept in the +next chamber, and every sound was audible through the narrow partition--I +drew my darling books out from under a board of the floor, one end of which +I had gradually loosened at odd minutes, and with them a rushlight, earned +by running on messages, or by taking bits of work home, and finishing them +for my fellows. + +No wonder that with this scanty rest, and this complicated exertion of +hands, eyes, and brain, followed by the long dreary day's work of the shop, +my health began to fail; my eyes grew weaker and weaker; my cough became +more acute; my appetite failed me daily. My mother noticed the change, +and questioned me about it, affectionately enough. But I durst not, alas! +tell the truth. It was not one offence, but the arrears of months of +disobedience which I should have had to confess; and so arose infinite +false excuses, and petty prevarications, which embittered and clogged still +more my already overtasked spirit. About my own ailments--formidable as +I believed they were--I never had a moment's anxiety. The expectation of +early death was as unnatural to me as it is, I suspect, to almost all. I +die? Had I not hopes, plans, desires, infinite? Could I die while they were +unfulfilled? Even now, I do not believe I shall die yet. I will not believe +it--but let that pass. + +Yes, let that pass. Perhaps I have lived long enough--longer than many a +grey-headed man. + + There is a race of mortals who become + Old in their youth, and die ere middle age. + +And might not those days of mine then have counted as months?--those days +when, before starting forth to walk two miles to the shop at six o'clock in +the morning, I sat some three or four hours shivering on my bed, putting +myself into cramped and painful postures, not daring even to cough, lest my +mother should fancy me unwell, and come in to see me, poor dear soul!--my +eyes aching over the page, my feet wrapped up in the bedclothes, to keep +them from the miserable pain of the cold; longing, watching, dawn after +dawn, for the kind summer mornings, when I should need no candlelight. +Look at the picture awhile, ye comfortable folks, who take down from your +shelves what books you like best at the moment, and then lie back, amid +prints and statuettes, to grow wise in an easy-chair, with a blazing fire +and a camphine lamp. The lower classes uneducated! Perhaps you would be so +too, if learning cost you the privation which it costs some of them. + +But this concealment could not last. My only wonder is, that I continued to +get whole months of undiscovered study. One morning, about four o'clock, as +might have been expected, my mother heard me stirring, came in, and found +me sitting crosslegged on my bed, stitching away, indeed, with all my +might, but with a Virgil open before me. + +She glanced at the book, clutched it with one hand and my arm with the +other, and sternly asked, + +"Where did you get this heathen stuff?" + +A lie rose to my lips; but I had been so gradually entangled in the loathed +meshes of a system of concealment, and consequent prevarication, that +I felt as if one direct falsehood would ruin for ever my fast-failing +self-respect, and I told her the whole truth. She took the book and left +the room. It was Saturday morning, and I spent two miserable days, for she +never spoke a word to me till the two ministers had made their appearance, +and drank their tea on Sunday evening: then at last she opened: + +"And now, Mr. Wigginton, what account have you of this Mr. Mackaye, who has +seduced my unhappy boy from the paths of obedience?" + +"I am sorry to say, madam," answered the dark man, with a solemn snuffle, +"that he proves to be a most objectionable and altogether unregenerate +character. He is, as I am informed, neither more nor less than a Chartist, +and an open blasphemer." + +"He is not!" I interrupted, angrily. "He has told me more about God, and +given me better advice, than any human being, except my mother." + +"Ah! madam, so thinks the unconverted heart, ignorant that the god of the +Deist is not the God of the Bible--a consuming fire to all but His beloved +elect; the god of the Deist, unhappy youth, is a mere self-invented, +all-indulgent phantom--a will-o'-the-wisp, deluding the unwary, as he has +deluded you, into the slough of carnal reason and shameful profligacy." + +"Do you mean to call me a profligate?" I retorted fiercely, for my blood +was up, and I felt I was fighting for all which I prized in the world: +"if you do, you lie. Ask my mother when I ever disobeyed her before? I +have never touched a drop of anything stronger than water; I have slaved +over-hours to pay for my own candle, I have!--I have no sins to accuse +myself of, and neither you nor any person know of any. Do you call me a +profligate because I wish to educate myself and rise in life?" + +"Ah!" groaned my poor mother to herself, "still unconvinced of sin!" + +"The old Adam, my dear madam, you see,--standing, as he always does, on his +own filthy rags of works, while all the imaginations of his heart are only +evil continually. Listen to me, poor sinner--" + +"I will not listen to you," I cried, the accumulated disgust of years +bursting out once and for all, "for I hate and despise you, eating my poor +mother here out of house and home. You are one of those who creep into +widows' houses, and for pretence make long prayers. You, sir, I will hear," +I went on, turning to the dear old man who had sat by shaking his white +locks with a sad and puzzled air, "for I love you." + +"My dear sister Locke," he began, "I really think sometimes--that is, +ahem--with your leave, brother--I am almost disposed--but I should wish to +defer to your superior zeal--yet, at the same time, perhaps, the desire for +information, however carnal in itself, may be an instrument in the Lord's +hands--you know what I mean. I always thought him a gracious youth, madam, +didn't you? And perhaps--I only observe it in passing--the Lord's people +among the dissenting connexions are apt to undervalue human learning as a +means--of course, I mean, only as a means. It is not generally known, I +believe, that our reverend Puritan patriarchs, Howe and Baxter, Owen and +many more, were not altogether unacquainted with heathen authors; nay, that +they may have been called absolutely learned men. And some of our leading +ministers are inclined--no doubt they will be led rightly in so important +a matter--to follow the example of the Independents in educating their +young ministers, and turning Satan's weapons of heathen mythology against +himself, as St. Paul is said to have done. My dear boy, what books have you +now got by you of Mr. Mackaye's?" + +"Milton's Poems and a Latin Virgil." + +"Ah!" groaned the dark man; "will poetry, will Latin save an immortal +soul?" + +"I'll tell you what, sir; you say yourself that it depends on God's +absolute counsel whether I am saved or not. So, if I am elect, I shall be +saved whatever I do; and if I am not, I shall be damned whatever I do; and +in the mean time you had better mind your own business, and let me do the +best I can for this life, as the next is all settled for me." + +This flippant, but after all not unreasonable speech, seemed to silence the +man; and I took the opportunity of running up-stairs and bringing down my +Milton. The old man was speaking as I re-entered. + +"And you know, my dear madam, Mr. Milton was a true converted man, and a +Puritan." + +"He was Oliver Cromwell's secretary," I added. + +"Did he teach you to disobey your mother?" asked my mother. + +I did not answer; and the old man, after turning over a few leaves, as if +he knew the book well, looked up. + +"I think, madam, you might let the youth keep these books, if he will +promise, as I am sure he will, to see no more of Mr. Mackaye." + +I was ready to burst out crying, but I made up my mind and answered, + +"I must see him once again, or he will think me so ungrateful. He is the +best friend that I ever had, except you, mother. Besides, I do not know if +he will lend me any, after this." + +My mother looked at the old minister, and then gave a sullen assent. + +"Promise me only to see him once--but I cannot trust you. You have deceived +me once, Alton, and you may again!" + +"I shall not, I shall not," I answered proudly. "You do not know me"--and I +spoke true. + +"You do not know yourself, my poor dear foolish child!" she replied--and +that was true too. + +"And now, dear friends," said the dark man, "let us join in offering up a +few words of special intercession." + +We all knelt down, and I soon discovered that by the special intercession +was meant a string of bitter and groundless slanders against poor me, +twisted into the form of a prayer for my conversion, "if it were God's +will." To which I responded with a closing "Amen," for which I was sorry +afterwards, when I recollected that it was said in merely insolent mockery. +But the little faith I had was breaking up fast--not altogether, surely, by +my own fault. [Footnote: The portraits of the minister and the missionary +are surely exceptions to their class, rather than the average. The Baptists +have had their Andrew Fuller and Robert Hall, and among missionaries Dr. +Carey, and noble spirits in plenty. But such men as those who excited +Alton Locke's disgust are to be met with, in every sect; in the Church of +England, and in the Church of Rome. And it is a real and fearful scandal +to the young, to see such men listened to as God's messengers, in spite +of their utter want of any manhood or virtue, simply because they are +"orthodox," each according to the shibboleths of his hearers, and possess +that vulpine "discretion of dulness," whose miraculous might Dean Swift +sets forth in his "Essay on the Fates of Clergymen." Such men do exist, and +prosper; and as long as they are allowed to do so, Alton Lockes will meet +them, and be scandalized by them.--ED.] + +At all events, from that day I was emancipated from modern Puritanism. The +ministers both avoided all serious conversation with me; and my mother +did the same; while, with a strength of mind, rare among women, she never +alluded to the scene of that Sunday evening. It was a rule with her never +to recur to what was once done and settled. What was to be, might be prayed +over. But it was to be endured in silence; yet wider and wider ever from +that time opened the gulf between us. + +I went trembling the next afternoon to Mackaye and told my story. He first +scolded me severely for disobeying my mother. "He that begins o' that gate, +laddie, ends by disobeying God and his ain conscience. Gin ye're to be a +scholar, God will make you one--and if not, ye'll no mak' yoursel' ane +in spite o' Him and His commandments." And then he filled his pipe and +chuckled away in silence; at last he exploded in a horse-laugh. + +"So ye gied the ministers a bit o' yer mind? 'The deil's amang the tailors' +in gude earnest, as the sang says. There's Johnnie Crossthwaite kicked the +Papist priest out o' his house yestreen. Puir ministers, it's ill times wi' +them! They gang about keckling and screighing after the working men, like +a hen that's hatched ducklings, when she sees them tak' the water. Little +Dunkeld's coming to London sune, I'm thinking. + + "Hech! sic a parish, a parish, a parish; + Hech! sic a parish as little Dunkeld! + They hae stickit the minister, hanged the precentor, + Dung down the steeple, and drucken the bell." + +"But may I keep the books a little while, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Keep them till ye die, gin ye will. What is the worth o' them to me? What +is the worth o' anything to me, puir auld deevil, that ha' no half a dizen +years to live at the furthest. God bless ye, my bairn; gang hame, and mind +your mither, or it's little gude books'll do ye." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +TAILORS AND SOLDIERS. + + +I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources. I read and re-read +Milton's "Poems" and Virgil's "Æneid" for six more months at every spare +moment; thus spending over them, I suppose, all in all, far more time than +most gentlemen have done. I found, too, in the last volume of Milton, a few +of his select prose works: the "Areopagitica," the "Defence of the English +People," and one or two more, in which I gradually began to take an +interest; and, little of them as I could comprehend, I was awed by their +tremendous depth and power, as well as excited by the utterly new trains of +thought into which they led me. Terrible was the amount of bodily fatigue +which I had to undergo in reading at every spare moment, while walking to +and fro from my work, while sitting up, often from midnight till dawn, +stitching away to pay for the tallow-candle which I burnt, till I had to +resort to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself awake, +even at the expense of bodily pain--Heaven forbid that I should weary +my readers by describing them! Young men of the upper classes, to whom +study--pursue it as intensely as you will--is but the business of the day, +and every spare moment relaxation; little you guess the frightful drudgery +undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself,--to live +at once two lives, each as severe as the whole of yours,--to bring to the +self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement, a body and brain already +worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour. I did it. God forbid, though, +that I should take credit to myself for it. Hundreds more have done it, +with still fewer advantages than mine. Hundreds more, an ever-increasing +army of martyrs, are doing it at this moment: of some of them, too, perhaps +you may hear hereafter. + +I had read through Milton, as I said, again and again; I had got out of +him all that my youth and my unregulated mind enabled me to get. I had +devoured, too, not without profit, a large old edition of "Fox's Martyrs," +which the venerable minister lent me, and now I was hungering again for +fresh food, and again at a loss where to find it. + +I was hungering, too, for more than information--for a friend. Since my +intercourse with Sandy Mackaye had been stopped, six months had passed +without my once opening my lips to any human being upon the subjects with +which my mind was haunted day and night. I wanted to know more about +poetry, history, politics, philosophy--all things in heaven and earth. But, +above all, I wanted a faithful and sympathizing ear into which to pour all +my doubts, discontents, and aspirations. My sister Susan, who was one year +younger than myself, was growing into a slender, pretty, hectic girl of +sixteen. But she was altogether a devout Puritan. She had just gone through +the process of conviction of sin and conversion; and being looked upon +at the chapel as an especially gracious professor, was either unable or +unwilling to think or speak on any subject, except on those to which I +felt a growing distaste. She had shrunk from me, too, very much, since my +ferocious attack that Sunday evening on the dark minister, who was her +special favourite. I remarked it, and it was a fresh cause of unhappiness +and perplexity. + +At last I made up my mind, come what would, to force myself upon +Crossthwaite. He was the only man whom I knew who seemed able to help me; +and his very reserve had invested him with a mystery, which served to +heighten my imagination of his powers. I waylaid him one day coming out of +the workroom to go home, and plunged at once desperately into the matter. + +"Mr. Crossthwaite, I want to speak to you. I want to ask you to advise me." + +"I have known that a long time." + +"Then why did you never say a kind word to me?" + +"Because I was waiting to see whether you were worth saying a kind word to. +It was but the other day, remember, you were a bit of a boy. Now, I think, +I may trust you with a thing or two. Besides, I wanted to see whether you +trusted me enough to ask me. Now you've broke the ice at last, in with you, +head and ears, and see what you can fish out." + +"I am very unhappy--" + +"That's no new disorder that I know of." + +"No; but I think the reason I am unhappy is a strange one; at least, I +never read of but one person else in the same way. I want to educate +myself, and I can't." + +"You must have read precious little then, if you think yourself in a +strange way. Bless the boy's heart! And what the dickens do you want to be +educating yourself for, pray?" + +This was said in a tone of good-humoured banter, which gave me courage. He +offered to walk homewards with me; and, as I shambled along by his side, I +told him all my story and all my griefs. + +I never shall forget that walk. Every house, tree, turning, which we passed +that day on our way, is indissolubly connected in my mind with some strange +new thought which arose in me just at each spot; and recurs, so are the +mind and the senses connected, as surely as I repass it. + +I had been telling him about Sandy Mackaye. He confessed to an acquaintance +with him; but in a reserved and mysterious way, which only heightened my +curiosity. + +We were going through the Horse Guards, and I could not help lingering +to look with wistful admiration on the huge mustachoed war-machines who +sauntered about the court-yard. + +A tall and handsome officer, blazing in scarlet and gold, cantered in on a +superb horse, and, dismounting, threw the reins to a dragoon as grand and +gaudy as himself. Did I envy him? Well--I was but seventeen. And there is +something noble to the mind, as well as to the eye, in the great strong +man, who can fight--a completeness, a self-restraint, a terrible sleeping +power in him. As Mr. Carlyle says, "A soldier, after all, is--one of the +few remaining realities of the age. All other professions almost promise +one thing, and perform--alas! what? But this man promises to fight, and +does it; and, if he be told, will veritably take out a long sword and kill +me." + +So thought my companion, though the mood in which he viewed the fact was +somewhat different from my own. + +"Come on," he said, peevishly clutching me by the arm; "what do you want +dawdling? Are you a nursery-maid, that you must stare at those red-coated +butchers?" And a deep curse followed. + +"What harm have they done you?" + +"I should think I owed them turn enough." + +"What?" + +"They cut my father down at Sheffield,--perhaps with the very swords he +helped to make,--because he would not sit still and starve, and see us +starving around him, while those who fattened on the sweat of his brow, and +on those lungs of his, which the sword-grinding dust was eating out day by +day, were wantoning on venison and champagne. That's the harm they've done +me, my chap!" + +"Poor fellows!--they only did as they were ordered, I suppose." + +"And what business have they to let themselves be ordered? What right, I +say--what right has any free, reasonable soul on earth, to sell himself for +a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong--even his own brother +or his own father--just because such a whiskered, profligate jackanapes +as that officer, without learning, without any god except his own +looking-glass and his opera-dancer--a fellow who, just because he is born +a gentleman, is set to command grey-headed men before he can command his +own meanest passions. Good heavens! that the lives of free men should be +entrusted to such a stuffed cockatoo; and that free men should be such +traitors to their country, traitors to their own flesh and blood, as to +sell themselves, for a shilling a day and the smirks of the nursery-maids, +to do that fellow's bidding!" + +"What are you a-grumbling here about, my man?--gotten the cholera?" asked +one of the dragoons, a huge, stupid-looking lad. + +"About you, you young long-legged cut-throat," answered Crossthwaite, "and +all your crew of traitors." + +"Help, help, coomrades o' mine!" quoth the dragoon, bursting with laughter; +"I'm gaun be moorthered wi' a little booy that's gane mad, and toorned +Chartist." + +I dragged Crossthwaite off; for what was jest to the soldiers, I saw, by +his face, was fierce enough earnest to him. We walked on a little, in +silence. + +"Now," I said, "that was a good-natured fellow enough, though he was a +soldier. You and he might have cracked many a joke together, if you did but +understand each other;--and he was a countryman of yours, too." + +"I may crack something else besides jokes with him some day," answered he, +moodily. + +"'Pon my word, you must take care how you do it. He is as big as four of +us." + +"That vile aristocrat, the old Italian poet--what's his +name?--Ariosto--ay!--he knew which quarter the wind was making for, when he +said that fire-arms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen +in armour, that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep. +Gunpowder is your true leveller--dash physical strength! A boy's a man with +a musket in his hand, my chap!" + +"God forbid," I said, "that I should ever be made a man of in that way, or +you either. I do not think we are quite big enough to make fighters; and if +we were, what have we got to fight about?" + +"Big enough to make fighters?" said he, half to himself; "or strong enough, +perhaps?--or clever enough?--and yet Alexander was a little man, and the +Petit Caporal, and Nelson, and Cæsar, too; and so was Saul of Tarsus, +and weakly he was into the bargain. Æsop was a dwarf, and so was Attila; +Shakspeare was lame; Alfred, a rickety weakling; Byron, clubfooted;--so +much for body _versus_ spirit--brute force _versus_ genius--genius." + +I looked at him; his eyes glared like two balls of fire. Suddenly he turned +to me. + +"Locke, my boy, I've made an ass of myself, and got into a rage, and broken +a good old resolution of mine, and a promise that I made to my dear little +woman--bless her! and said things to you that you ought to know nothing of +for this long time; but those red-coats always put me beside myself. God +forgive me!" And he held out his hand to me cordially. + +"I can quite understand your feeling deeply on one point," I said, as I +took it, "after the sad story you told me; but why so bitter on all? What +is there so very wrong about things, that we must begin fighting about it?" + +"Bless your heart, poor innocent! What is wrong?--what is not wrong? Wasn't +there enough in that talk with Mackaye, that you told me of just now, to +show anybody that, who can tell a hawk from a hand-saw?" + +"Was it wrong in him to give himself such trouble about the education of a +poor young fellow, who has no tie on him, who can never repay him?" + +"No; that's just like him. He feels for the people, for he has been one of +us. He worked in a printing-office himself many a year, and he knows the +heart of the working man. But he didn't tell you the whole truth about +education. He daren't tell you. No one who has money dare speak out his +heart; not that he has much certainly; but the cunning old Scot that he is, +he lives by the present system of things, and he won't speak ill of the +bridge which carries him over--till the time comes." + +I could not understand whither all this tended, and walked on silent and +somewhat angry, at hearing the least slight cast on Mackaye. + +"Don't you see, stupid?" he broke out at last. "What did he say to you +about gentlemen being crammed by tutors and professors? Have not you as +good a right to them as any gentleman?" + +"But he told me they were no use--that every man must educate himself." + +"Oh! all very fine to tell you the grapes are sour, when you can't reach +them. Bah, lad! Can't you see what comes of education?--that any dolt, +provided he be a gentleman, can be doctored up at school and college, +enough to make him play his part decently--his mighty part of ruling us, +and riding over our heads, and picking our pockets, as parson, doctor, +lawyer, member of parliament--while we--you now, for instance--cleverer +than ninety-nine gentlemen out of a hundred, if you had one-tenth the +trouble taken with you that is taken with every pig-headed son of an +aristocrat--" + +"Am I clever?" asked I, in honest surprise. + +"What! haven't you found that out yet? Don't try to put that on me. Don't a +girl know when she's pretty, without asking her neighbours?" + +"Really, I never thought about it." + +"More simpleton you. Old Mackaye has, at all events; though, canny +Scotchman that he is, he'll never say a word to you about it, yet he makes +no secret of it to other people. I heard him the other day telling some of +our friends that you were a thorough young genius." + +I blushed scarlet, between pleasure and a new feeling; was it ambition? + +"Why, hav'n't you a right to aspire to a college education as any +do-nothing canon there at the abbey, lad?" + +"I don't know that I have a right to anything." + +"What, not become what Nature intended you to become? What has she given +you brains for, but to be educated and used? Oh! I heard a fine lecture +upon that at our club the other night. There was a man there--a gentleman, +too, but a thorough-going people's man, I can tell you, Mr. O'Flynn. What +an orator that man is to be sure! The Irish Æschines, I hear they call +him in Conciliation Hall. Isn't he the man to pitch into the Mammonites? +'Gentlemen and ladies,' says he, 'how long will a diabolic society'--no, an +effete society it was--'how long will an effete, emasculate, and effeminate +society, in the diabolic selfishness of its eclecticism, refuse to +acknowledge what my immortal countryman, Burke, calls the "Dei voluntatem +in rebus revelatam"--the revelation of Nature's will in the phenomena of +matter? The cerebration of each is the prophetic sacrament of the yet +undeveloped possibilities of his mentation. The form of the brain alone, +and not the possession of the vile gauds of wealth and rank, constitute +man's only right to education--to the glories of art and science. Those +beaming eyes and roseate lips beneath me proclaim a bevy of undeveloped +Aspasias, of embryo Cleopatras, destined by Nature, and only restrained by +man's injustice, from ruling the world by their beauty's eloquence. Those +massive and beetling brows, gleaming with the lambent flames of patriotic +ardour--what is needed to unfold them into a race of Shakspeares and of +Gracchi, ready to proclaim with sword and lyre the divine harmonies of +liberty, equality, and fraternity, before a quailing universe?'" + +"It sounds very grand," replied I, meekly; "and I should like very much +certainly to have a good education. But I can't see whose injustice keeps +me out of one if I can't afford to pay for it." + +"Whose? Why, the parson's to be sure. They've got the monopoly of education +in England, and they get their bread by it at their public schools and +universities; and of course it's their interest to keep up the price of +their commodity, and let no man have a taste of it who can't pay down +handsomely. And so those aristocrats of college dons go on rolling in +riches, and fellowships, and scholarships, that were bequeathed by the +people's friends in old times, just to educate poor scholars like you and +me, and give us our rights as free men." + +"But I thought the clergy were doing so much to educate the poor. At +least, I hear all the dissenting ministers grumbling at their continual +interference." + +"Ay, educating them to make them slaves and bigots. They don't teach them +what they teach their own sons. Look at the miserable smattering of general +information--just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last +lesson of 'Obey the powers that be'--whatever they be; leave us alone in +our comforts, and starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's +will. And then, if a boy does show talent in school, do they help him up +in life? Not they; when he has just learnt enough to whet his appetite for +more, they turn him adrift again, to sink and drudge--to do his duty, as +they call it, in that state of life to which society and the devil have +called him." + +"But there are innumerable stories of great Englishmen who have risen from +the lowest ranks." + +"Ay; but where are the stories of those who have not risen--of all the +noble geniuses who have ended in desperation, drunkenness, starvation, +suicide, because no one would take the trouble of lifting them up, and +enabling them to walk in the path which Nature had marked out for them? +Dead men tell no tales; and this old whited sepulchre, society, ain't going +to turn informer against itself." + +"I trust and hope," I said, sadly, "that if God intends me to rise, He +will open the way for me; perhaps the very struggles and sorrows of a poor +genius may teach him more than ever wealth and prosperity could." + +"True, Alton, my boy! and that's my only comfort. It does make men of us, +this bitter battle of life. We working men, when we do come out of the +furnace, come out, not tinsel and papier mache, like those fops of red-tape +statesmen, but steel and granite, Alton, my boy--that has been seven times +tried in the fire: and woe to the papier mache gentleman that runs against +us! But," he went on, sadly, "for one who comes safe through the furnace, +there are a hundred who crack in the burning. You are a young bear, my +lad, with all your sorrows before you; and you'll find that a working +man's training is like the Red Indian children's. The few who are +strong enough to stand it grow up warriors; but all those who are not +fire-and-water-proof by nature--just die, Alton, my lad, and the tribe +thinks itself well rid of them." + +So that conversation ended. But it had implanted in my bosom a new seed of +mingled good and evil, which was destined to bear fruit, precious perhaps +as well as bitter. God knows, it has hung on the tree long enough. Sour +and harsh from the first, it has been many a year in ripening. But the +sweetness of the apple, the potency of the grape, as the chemists tell +us, are born out of acidity--a developed sourness. Will it be so with +my thoughts? Dare I assert, as I sit writing here, with the wild waters +slipping past the cabin windows, backwards and backwards ever, every plunge +of the vessel one forward leap from the old world--worn-out world I had +almost called it, of sham civilization and real penury--dare I hope ever to +return and triumph? Shall I, after all, lay my bones among my own people, +and hear the voices of freemen whisper in my dying ears? + +Silence, dreaming heart! Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof--and +the good thereof also. Would that I had known that before! Above all, that +I had known it on that night, when first the burning thought arose in my +heart, that I was unjustly used; that society had not given me my rights. +It came to me as a revelation, celestial-infernal, full of glorious hopes +of the possible future in store for me through the perfect development of +all my faculties; and full, too, of fierce present rage, wounded vanity, +bitter grudgings against those more favoured than myself, which grew in +time almost to cursing against the God who had made me a poor untutored +working man, and seemed to have given me genius only to keep me in a +Tantalus' hell of unsatisfied thirst. + +Ay, respectable gentlemen and ladies, I will confess all to you--you shall +have, if you enjoy it, a fresh opportunity for indulging that supreme +pleasure which the press daily affords you of insulting the classes +whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; +the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, +inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous.--Is +your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have +you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of +these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not as they +came to me, as they come to thousands of the working men, daily and hourly, +"till their torments do, by length of time, become their elements"? What, +are we covetous too? Yes! And if those who have, like you, still covet +more, what wonder if those who have nothing covet something? Profligate +too? Well, though that imputation as a generality is utterly calumnious, +though your amount of respectable animal enjoyment per annum is a hundred +times as great as that of the most self-indulgent artizan, yet, if you had +ever felt what it is to want, not only every luxury of the senses, but even +bread to eat, you would think more mercifully of the man who makes up by +rare excesses, and those only of the limited kinds possible to him, for +long intervals of dull privation, and says in his madness, "Let us eat and +drink, for to-morrow we die!" We have our sins, and you have yours. Ours +may be the more gross and barbaric, but yours are none the less damnable; +perhaps all the more so, for being the sleek, subtle, respectable, +religious sins they are. You are frantic enough, if our part of the press +calls you hard names, but you cannot see that your part of the press +repays it back to us with interest. _We_ see those insults, and feel them +bitterly enough; and do not forget them, alas! soon enough, while they pass +unheeded by your delicate eyes as trivial truisms. Horrible, unprincipled, +villanous, seditious, frantic, blasphemous, are epithets, of course, when +applied to--to how large a portion of the English people, you will some day +discover to your astonishment. When will that come, and how? In thunder, +and storm, and garments rolled in blood? Or like the dew on the mown grass, +and the clear shining of the sunlight after April rain? + +Yes, it was true. Society had not given me my rights. And woe unto the man +on whom that idea, true or false, rises lurid, filling all his thoughts +with stifling glare, as of the pit itself. Be it true, be it false, it is +equally a woe to believe it; to have to live on a negation; to have to +worship for our only idea, as hundreds of thousands of us have this day, +the hatred, of the things which are. Ay, though, one of us here and there +may die in faith, in sight of the promised land, yet is it not hard, when +looking from the top of Pisgah into "the good time coming," to watch the +years slipping away one by one, and death crawling nearer and nearer, and +the people wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, and Jordan not +yet passed, the promised land not yet entered? While our little children +die around us, like lambs beneath the knife, of cholera and typhus and +consumption, and all the diseases which the good time can and will prevent; +which, as science has proved, and you the rich confess, might be prevented +at once, if you dared to bring in one bold and comprehensive measure, +and not sacrifice yearly the lives of thousands to the idol of vested +interests, and a majority in the House. Is it not hard to men who smart +beneath such things to help crying aloud--"Thou cursed Moloch-Mammon, take +my life if thou wilt; let me die in the wilderness, for I have deserved +it; but these little ones in mines and factories, in typhus-cellars, and +Tooting pandemoniums, what have they done? If not in their fathers' cause, +yet still in theirs, were it so great a sin to die upon a barricade?" + +Or after all, my working brothers, is it true of our promised land, even as +of that Jewish one of old, that the _priests'_ feet must first cross the +mystic stream into the good land and large which God has prepared for us? + +Is it so indeed? Then in the name of the Lord of Hosts, ye priests of His, +why will ye not awake, and arise, and go over Jordan, that the people of +the Lord may follow you? + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE SCEPTIC'S MOTHER. + + +My readers will perceive from what I have detailed, that I was not likely +to get any positive ground of comfort from Crossthwaite; and from within +myself there was daily less and less hope of any. Daily the struggle became +more intolerable between my duty to my mother and my duty to myself--that +inward thirst for mental self-improvement, which, without any clear +consciousness of its sanctity or inspiration, I felt, and could not help +feeling, that I _must_ follow. No doubt it was very self-willed and +ambitious of me to do that which rich men's sons are flogged for not doing, +and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships for +doing. But the nineteenth year is a time of life at which self-will is apt +to exhibit itself in other people besides tailors; and those religious +persons who think it no sin to drive their sons on through classics and +mathematics, in hopes of gaining them a station in life, ought not to be +very hard upon me for driving myself on through the same path without any +such selfish hope of gain--though perhaps the very fact of my having no +wish or expectation of such advantage will constitute in their eyes my sin +and folly, and prove that I was following the dictates merely of a carnal +lust, and not of a proper worldly prudence. I really do not wish to be +flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as much as any man, in +myself and in my own class. But there are excuses for such a fault in the +working man. It does sour and madden him to be called presumptuous and +ambitious for the very same aspirations which are lauded up to the skies in +the sons of the rich--unless, indeed, he will do one little thing, and so +make his peace with society. If he will desert his own class; if he will +try to become a sham gentleman, a parasite, and, if he can, a Mammonite, +the world will compliment him on his noble desire to "_rise in life_." +He will have won his spurs, and be admitted into that exclusive pale of +knighthood, beyond which it is a sin to carry arms even in self-defence. +But if the working genius dares to be true to his own class--to stay among +them--to regenerate them--to defend them--to devote his talents to those +among whom God placed him and brought him up--then he is the demagogue, the +incendiary, the fanatic, the dreamer. So you would have the monopoly of +talent, too, exclusive worldlings? And yet you pretend to believe in the +miracle of Pentecost, and the religion that was taught by the carpenter's +Son, and preached across the world by fishermen! + +I was several times minded to argue the question out with my mother, and +assert for myself the same independence of soul which I was now earning for +my body by my wages. Once I had resolved to speak to her that very evening; +but, strangely enough, happening to open the Bible, which, alas! I did +seldom at that time, my eye fell upon the chapter where Jesus, after having +justified to His parents His absence in the Temple, while hearing the +doctors and asking them questions, yet went down with them to Nazareth +after all, and was subject unto them. The story struck me vividly as a +symbol of my own duties. But on reading further, I found more than one +passage which seemed to me to convey a directly opposite lesson, where His +mother and His brethren, fancying Him mad, attempted to interfere with His +labours, and asserting their family rights as reasons for retaining Him, +met with a peremptory rebuff. I puzzled my head for some time to find +out which of the two cases was the more applicable to my state of +self-development. The notion of asking for teaching from on high on +such a point had never crossed me. Indeed, if it had, I did not believe +sufficiently either in the story or in the doctrines connected with it, +to have tried such a resource. And so, as may be supposed, my growing +self-conceit decided for me that the latter course was the fitting one. + +And yet I had not energy to carry it out. I was getting so worn out in body +and mind from continual study and labour, stinted food and want of sleep, +that I could not face the thought of an explosion, such as I knew must +ensue, and I lingered on in the same unhappy state, becoming more and more +morose in manner to my mother, while I was as assiduous as ever in all +filial duties. But I had no pleasure in home. She seldom spoke to me. +Indeed, there was no common topic about which we could speak. Besides, ever +since that fatal Sunday evening, I saw that she suspected me and watched +me. I had good reason to believe that she set spies upon my conduct. Poor +dear mother! God forbid that I should accuse thee for a single care of +thine, for a single suspicion even, prompted as they all were by a mother's +anxious love. I would never have committed these things to paper, hadst +thou not been far beyond the reach or hearing of them; and only now, in +hopes that they may serve as a warning, in some degree to mothers, but ten +times more to children. For I sinned against thee, deeply and shamefully, +in thought and deed, while thou didst never sin against me; though all thy +caution did but hasten the fatal explosion which came, and perhaps must +have come, under some form or other, in any case. + +I had been detained one night in the shop till late; and on my return my +mother demanded, in a severe tone, the reason of my stay; and on my telling +her, answered as severely that she did not believe me; that she had too +much reason to suspect that I had been with bad companions. + +"Who dared to put such a thought into your head?" + +She "would not give up her authorities, but she had too much reason to +believe them." + +Again I demanded the name of my slanderer, and was refused it. And then. +I burst out, for the first time in my life, into a real fit of rage with +her. I cannot tell how I dared to say what I did, but I was weak, nervous, +irritable--my brain excited beyond all natural tension. Above all, I felt +that she was unjust to me; and my good conscience, as well as my pride, +rebelled. + +"You have never trusted me," I cried, "you have watched me--" + +"Did you not deceive me once already?" + +"And if I did," I answered, more and more excited, "have I not slaved for +you, stinted myself of clothes to pay your rent? Have I not run to and fro +for you like a slave, while I knew all the time you did not respect me or +trust me? If you had only treated me as a child and an idiot, I could have +borne it. But you have been thinking of me all the while as an incarnate +fiend--dead in trespasses and sins--a child of wrath and the devil. What +right have you to be astonished if I should do my father's works?" + +"You may be ignorant of vital religion," she answered; "and you may insult +me. But if you make a mock of God's Word, you leave my house. If you can +laugh at religion, you can deceive me." + +The pent-up scepticism of years burst forth. + +"Mother," I said, "don't talk to me about religion, and election, and +conversion, and all that--I don't believe one word of it. Nobody does, +except good kind people--(like you, alas! I was going to say, but the devil +stopped the words at my lips)--who must needs have some reason to account +for their goodness. That Bowyer--he's a soft heart by nature, and as he +is, so he does--religion has had nothing to do with that, any more than it +has with that black-faced, canting scoundrel who has been telling you lies +about me. Much his heart is changed. He carries sneak and slanderer written +in his face--and sneak and slanderer he will be, elect or none. Religion? +Nobody believes in it. The rich don't; or they wouldn't fill their churches +up with pews, and shut the poor out, all the time they are calling them +brothers. They believe the gospel? Then why do they leave the men who make +their clothes to starve in such hells on earth as our workroom? No more +do the tradespeople believe in it; or they wouldn't go home from sermon +to sand the sugar, and put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying +puffs of their vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the +poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as for the +workmen--they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much good religion is doing +for them! You may see it's fit only for women and children--for go where +you will, church or chapel, you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies! +I don't believe a word of it,--once and for all. I'm old enough to think +for myself, and a free-thinker I will be, and believe nothing but what I +know and understand." + +I had hardly spoken the words, when I would have given worlds to recall +them--but it was to be--and it was. + +Sternly she looked at me full in the face, till my eyes dropped before her +gaze. Then she spoke steadily and slowly: + +"Leave this house this moment. You are no son of mine henceforward. Do you +think I will have my daughter polluted by the company of an infidel and a +blasphemer?" + +"I will go," I answered fiercely; "I can get my own living at all events!" +And before I had time to think, I had rushed upstairs, packed up my bundle, +not forgetting the precious books, and was on my way through the frosty, +echoing streets, under the cold glare of the winter's moon. + +I had gone perhaps half a mile, when the thought of home rushed over +me--the little room where I had spent my life--the scene of all my childish +joys and sorrows--which I should never see again, for I felt that my +departure was for ever. Then I longed to see my mother once again--not to +speak to her--for I was at once too proud and too cowardly to do that--but +to have a look at her through the window. One look--for all the while, +though I was boiling over with rage and indignation, I felt that it was all +on the surface--that in the depths of our hearts I loved her and she loved +me. And yet I wished to be angry, wished to hate her. Strange contradiction +of the flesh and spirit! + +Hastily and silently I retraced my steps to the house. The gate was +padlocked. I cautiously stole over the palings to the window--the shutter +was closed and fast. I longed to knock--I lifted my hand to the door, and +dare not: indeed, I knew that it was useless, in my dread of my mother's +habit of stern determination. That room--that mother I never saw again. I +turned away; sickened at heart, I was clambering back again, looking behind +me towards the window, when I felt a strong grip on my collar, and turning +round, had a policeman's lantern flashed in my face. + +"Hullo, young'un, and what do you want here?" with a strong emphasis, after +the fashion of policemen, on all his pronouns. + +"Hush! or you'll alarm my mother!" + +"Oh! eh! Forgot the latch-key, you sucking Don Juan, that's it, is it? Late +home from the Victory?" + +I told him simply how the case stood, and entreated him to get me a night's +lodging, assuring him that my mother would not admit me, or I ask to be +admitted. + +The policeman seemed puzzled, but after scratching his hat in lieu of his +head for some seconds, replied, + +"This here is the dodge--you goes outside and lies down on the kerb-stone; +whereby I spies you a-sleeping in the streets, contrary to Act o' +Parliament; whereby it is my duty to take you to the station-house; whereby +you gets a night's lodging free gracious for nothing, and company perwided +by her Majesty." + +"Oh, not to the station-house!" I cried in shame and terror. + +"Werry well; then you must keep moving all night continually, whereby you +avoids the hact; or else you goes to a twopenny-rope shop and gets a lie +down. And your bundle you'd best leave at my house. Twopenny-rope society +a'n't particular. I'm going off my beat; you walk home with me and leave +your traps. Everybody knows me--Costello, V 21, that's my number." + +So on I went with the kind-hearted man, who preached solemnly to me all the +way on the fifth commandment. But I heard very little of it; for before I +had proceeded a quarter of a mile, a deadly faintness and dizziness came +over me, I staggered, and fell against the railings. + +"And have you been drinking arter all?" + +"I never--a drop in my life--nothing but bread-and-water this fortnight." + +And it was true. I had been paying for my own food, and had stinted +myself to such an extent, that between starvation, want of sleep, and +over-exertion, I was worn to a shadow, and the last drop had filled the +cup; the evening's scene and its consequences had been too much for me, and +in the middle of an attempt to explain matters to the policeman, I dropped +on the pavement, bruising my face heavily. + +He picked me up, put me under one arm and my bundle under the other, and +was proceeding on his march, when three men came rollicking up. + +"Hullo, Poleax--Costello--What's that? Work for us? A demp unpleasant +body?" + +"Oh, Mr. Bromley, sir! Hope you're well, sir! Werry rum go this here, sir! +I finds this cove in the streets. He says his mother turned him out o' +doors. He seems very fair spoken, and very bad in he's head, and very bad +in he's chest, and very bad in he's legs, he does. And I can't come to no +conclusions respecting my conduct in this here case, nohow!" + +"Memorialize the Health of Towns Commission," suggested one. + +"Bleed him in the great toe," said the second. + +"Put a blister on the back of his left eye-ball," said a third. + +"Case of male asterisks," observed the first. "Rj. Aquæ pumpis puræ +quantum suff. Applicatur exterò pro re natâ. J. Bromley, M.D., and don't +he wish he may get through!"-- + +"Tip us your daddle, my boy," said the second speaker. "I'll tell you what, +Bromley, this fellow's very bad. He's got no more pulse than the +Pimlico sewer. Run in into the next pot'us. Here--you lay hold of him, +Bromley--that last round with the cabman nearly put my humerus out." + +The huge, burly, pea-jacketed medical student--for such I saw at once +he was--laid hold of me on the right tenderly enough, and walked me off +between him and the policeman. + +I fell again into a faintness, from which I was awakened by being shoved +through the folding-doors of a gin-shop, into a glare of light and hubbub +of blackguardism, and placed on a settle, while my conductor called out-- + +"Pots round, Mary, and a go of brandy hot with, for the patient. Here, +young'un, toss it off, it'll make your hair grow." + +I feebly answered that I never had drunk anything stronger than water. + +"High time to begin, then; no wonder you're so ill. Well, if you won't, +I'll make you--" + +And taking my head under his arm, he seized me by the nose, while another +poured the liquor down my throat--and certainly it revived me at once. + +A drunken drab pulled another drunken, drab off the settle to make room for +the "poor young man"; and I sat there with a confused notion that something +strange and dreadful had happened to me, while the party drained their +respective quarts of porter, and talked over the last boat-race with the +Leander. + +"Now then, gen'l'men," said the policeman, 'if you think he's recovered, +we'll take him home to his mother; she ought for to take him in, surely." + +"Yes, if she has as much heart in her as a dried walnut." + +But I resisted stoutly; though I longed to vindicate my mother's affection, +yet I could not face her. I entreated to be taken to the station-house; +threatened, in my desperation, to break the bar glasses, which, like Doll +Tearsheet's abuse, only elicited from the policeman a solemn "Very well"; +and under the unwonted excitement of the brandy, struggled so fiercely, and +talked so incoherently, that the medical students interfered. + +"We shall have this fellow in phrenitis, or laryngitis, or dothenenteritis, +or some other itis, before long, if he's aggravated." + +"And whichever it is, it'll kill him. He has no more stamina left than a +yard of pump water." + +"I should consider him chargeable to the parish," suggested the bar-keeper. + +"Exactually so, my Solomon of licensed victuallers. Get a workhouse order +for him, Costello." + +"And I should consider, also, sir," said the licensed victualler, with +increased importance, "having been a guardian myself, and knowing the hact, +as the parish couldn't refuse, because they're in power to recover all +hexpenses out of his mother." + +"To be sure; it's all the unnatural old witch's fault." + +"No, it is not," said I, faintly. + +"Wait till your opinion's asked, young'un. Go kick up the authorities, +policeman." + +"Now, I'll just tell you how that'll work, gemmen," answered the policeman, +solemnly. "I goes to the overseer--werry good sort o' man--but he's in bed. +I knocks for half an hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy, and sends me +to the relieving-officer. Werry good sort o' man he too; but he's in bed. +I knocks for another half-hour. He puts his nightcap out o' windy--sends +me to the medical officer for a certificate. Medical officer's gone to a +midwifery case. I hunts him for an hour or so. He's got hold of a babby +with three heads, or summat else; and two more women a-calling out for him +like blazes. 'He'll come to-morrow morning.' Now, I just axes your opinion +of that there most procrastinationest go." + +The big student, having cursed the parochial authorities in general, +offered to pay for my night's lodging at the public-house. The good man of +the house demurred at first, but relented on being reminded of the value +of a medical student's custom: whereon, without more ado, two of the rough +diamonds took me between them, carried me upstairs, undressed me, and put +me to bed, as tenderly as if they had been women. + +"He'll have the tantrums before morning, I'm afraid," said one. + +"Very likely to turn to typhus," said the other. + +"Well, I suppose--it's a horrid bore, but + + "What must be must; man is but dust, + If you can't get crumb, you must just eat crust. + +"Send me up a go of hot with, and I'll sit up with him till he's asleep, +dead, or better." + +"Well, then, I'll stay too; we may just as well make a night of it here as +well as anywhere else." + +And he pulled a short black pipe out of his pocket, and sat down to +meditate with his feet on the hobs of the empty grate; the other man went +down for the liquor; while I, between the brandy and exhaustion, fell fast +asleep, and never stirred till I woke the next morning with a racking +headache, and saw the big student standing by my bedside, having, as I +afterwards heard, sat by me till four in the morning. + +"Hallo, young'un, come to your senses? Headache, eh? Slightly +comato-crapulose? We'll give you some soda and salvolatile, and I'll pay +for your breakfast." + +And so he did, and when he was joined by his companions on their way to St. +George's, they were very anxious, having heard my story, to force a few +shillings on me "for luck," which, I need not say, I peremptorily refused, +assuring them that I could and would get my own living, and never take a +farthing from any man. + +"That's a plucky dog, though he's a tailor," I heard them say, as, after +overwhelming them with thanks, and vowing, amid shouts of laughter, to +repay them every farthing I had cost them, I took my way, sick and stunned, +towards my dear old Sandy Mackaye's street. + +Rough diamonds indeed! I have never met you again, but I have not forgotten +you. Your early life may be a coarse, too often a profligate one--but you +know the people, and the people know you: and your tenderness and care, +bestowed without hope of repayment, cheers daily many a poor soul in +hospital wards and fever-cellars--to meet its reward some day at the +people's hands. You belong to us at heart, as the Paris barricades can +tell. Alas! for the society which stifles in after-life too many of your +better feelings, by making you mere flunkeys and parasites, dependent for +your livelihood on the caprices and luxuries of the rich. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE DULWICH GALLERY. + + +Sandy Mackaye received me in a characteristic way--growled at me for +half an hour for quarrelling with my mother, and when I was at my wit's +end, suddenly offered me a bed in his house and the use of his little +sitting-room--and, bliss too great to hope! of his books also; and when I +talked of payment, told me to hold my tongue and mind my own business. So +I settled myself at once; and that very evening he installed himself as my +private tutor, took down a Latin book, and set me to work on it. + +"An' mind ye, laddie," said he, half in jest and half in earnest, "gin I +find ye playing truant, and reading a' sorts o' nonsense instead of minding +the scholastic methods and proprieties, I'll just bring ye in a bill at the +year's end o' twa guineas a week for lodgings and tuition, and tak' the law +o' ye; so mind and read what I tell ye. Do you comprehend noo?" + +I did comprehend, and obeyed him, determining to repay him some day--and +somehow--how I did not very clearly see. Thus I put myself more or less +into the old man's power; foolishly enough the wise world will say. But I +had no suspicion in my character; and I could not look at those keen grey +eyes, when, after staring into vacancy during some long preachment, they +suddenly flashed round at me, and through me, full of fun and quaint +thought, and kindly earnestness, and fancy that man less honest than his +face seemed to proclaim him. + +By-the-by, I have as yet given no description of the old eccentric's +abode--an unpardonable omission, I suppose, in these days of Dutch painting +and Boz. But the omission was correct, both historically and artistically, +for I had as yet only gone to him for books, books, nothing but books; and +I had been blind to everything in his shop but that fairy-land of shelves, +filled, in my simple fancy, with inexhaustible treasures, wonder-working, +omnipotent, as the magic seal of Solomon. + +It was not till I had been settled and at work for several nights in his +sanctum, behind the shop, that I began to become conscious what a strange +den that sanctum was. + +It was so dark, that without a gaslight no one but he could see to read +there, except on very sunny days. Not only were the shelves which covered +every inch of wall crammed with books and pamphlets, but the little window +was blocked up with them, the floor was piled with bundles of them, in some +places three feet deep, apparently in the wildest confusion--though there +was some mysterious order in them which he understood, and symbolized, +I suppose, by the various strange and ludicrous nicknames on their +tickets--for he never was at fault a moment if a customer asked for a +book, though it were buried deep in the chaotic stratum. Out of this book +alluvium a hole seemed to have been dug near the fireplace, just big enough +to hold his arm-chair and a table, book-strewn like everything else, and +garnished with odds and ends of MSS., and a snuffer-tray containing scraps +of half-smoked tobacco, "pipe-dottles," as he called them, which were +carefully resmoked over and over again, till nothing but ash was left. +His whole culinary utensils--for he cooked as well as eat in this strange +hole--were an old rusty kettle, which stood on one hob, and a blue plate +which, when washed, stood on the other. A barrel of true Aberdeen meal +peered out of a corner, half buried in books, and a "keg o' whusky, the +gift o' freens," peeped in like case out of another. + +This was his only food. "It was a' poison," he used to say, "in London. +Bread full o' alum and bones, and sic filth--meat over-driven till it was +a' braxy--water sopped wi' dead men's juice. Naething was safe but gude +Scots parrich and Athol brose." He carried his water-horror so far as to +walk some quarter of a mile every morning to fill his kettle at a favourite +pump. "Was he a cannibal, to drink out o' that pump hard-by, right under +the kirkyard?" But it was little he either ate or drank--he seemed to live +upon tobacco. From four in the morning till twelve at night, the pipe +never left his lips, except when he went into the outer shop. "It promoted +meditation, and drove awa' the lusts o' the flesh. Ech! it was worthy o' +that auld tyrant, Jamie, to write his counter-blast to the poor man's +freen! The hypocrite! to gang preaching the virtues o' evil-savoured smoke +'ad dæmones abigendos,--and then rail again tobacco, as if it was no as +gude for the purpose as auld rags and horn shavings!" + +Sandy Mackaye had a great fancy for political caricatures, rows of which, +there being no room for them on the walls, hung on strings from the +ceiling--like clothes hung out to dry--and among them dangled various books +to which he had taken an antipathy, principally High Tory and Benthamite, +crucified, impaled through their covers, and suspended in all sorts of +torturing attitudes. Among them, right over the table, figured a copy of +Icon Basilike dressed up in a paper shirt, all drawn over with figures of +flames and devils, and surmounted by a peaked paper cap, like a victim +at an _auto-da-fé_. And in the midst of all this chaos grinned from the +chimney-piece, among pipes and pens, pinches of salt and scraps of butter, +a tall cast of Michael Angelo's well-known skinless model--his pristine +white defaced by a cap of soot upon the top of his scalpless skull, and +every muscle and tendon thrown into horrible relief by the dirt which had +lodged among the cracks. There it stood, pointing with its ghastly arm +towards the door, and holding on its wrist a label with the following +inscription:-- + + Here stand I, the working man, + Get more off me if you can. + +I questioned Mackaye one evening about those hanged and crucified books, +and asked him if he ever sold any of them. + +"Ou, ay," he said; "if folks are fools enough to ask for them, I'll just +answer a fool according to his folly." + +"But," I said, "Mr. Mackaye, do you think it right to sell books of the +very opinions of which you disapprove so much?" + +"Hoot, laddie, it's just a spoiling o' the Egyptians; so mind yer book, and +dinna tak in hand cases o' conscience for ither folk. Yell ha' wark eneugh +wi' yer ain before ye're dune." + +And he folded round his knees his Joseph's coat, as he called it, an old +dressing-gown with one plaid sleeve, and one blue one, red shawl-skirts, +and a black broadcloth back, not to mention, innumerable patches of every +imaginable stuff and colour, filled his pipe, and buried his nose in +"Harrington's Oceana." He read at least twelve hours every day of his life, +and that exclusively old history and politics, though his favourite books +were Thomas Carlyle's works. Two or three evenings in the week, when he had +seen me safe settled at my studies, he used to disappear mysteriously +for several hours, and it was some time before I found out, by a chance +expression, that he was attending some meeting or committee of working-men. +I begged him to take me there with him. But I was stopped by a laconic +answer-- + +"When ye're ready." + +"And when shall I be ready, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Read yer book till I tell ye." + +And he twisted himself into his best coat, which had once been black, +squeezed on his little Scotch cap, and went out. + + * * * * * + +I now found myself, as the reader may suppose, in an element far more +congenial to my literary tastes, and which compelled far less privation of +sleep and food in order to find time and means for reading; and my health +began to mend from the very first day. But the thought of my mother haunted +me; and Mackaye seemed in no hurry to let me escape from it, for he +insisted on my writing to her in a penitent strain, informing her of my +whereabouts, and offering to return home if she should wish it. With +feelings strangely mingled between the desire of seeing her again and the +dread of returning to the old drudgery of surveillance, I sent the letter, +and waited the whole week without any answer. At last, one evening, when +I returned from work, Sandy seemed in a state of unusual exhilaration. He +looked at me again and again, winking and chuckling to himself in a way +which showed me that his good spirits had something to do with my concerns: +but he did not open on the subject till I had settled to my evening's +reading. Then, having brewed himself an unusually strong mug of +whisky-toddy, and brought out with great ceremony a clean pipe, he +commenced. + +"Alton, laddie, I've been fiechting Philistines for ye the day." + +"Ah! have you heard from my mother?" + +"I wadna say that exactly; but there's been a gran bailie body wi' me that +calls himsel' your uncle, and a braw young callant, a bairn o' his, I'm +thinking." + +"Ah! that's my cousin--George; and tell me--do tell me, what you said to +them." + +"Ou--that'll be mair concern o' mine than o' yourn. But ye're no going back +to your mither." + +My heart leapt up with--joy; there is no denying it--and then I burst into +tears. + +"And she won't see me? Has she really cast me off?" + +"Why, that'll be verra much as ye prosper, I'm thinking. Ye're an +unaccreedited hero, the noo, as Thomas Carlyle has it. 'But gin ye do weel +by yoursel', saith the Psalmist, 'ye'll find a' men speak well o' ye'--if +ye gang their gate. But ye're to gang to see your uncle at his shop o' +Monday next, at one o'clock. Now stint your greeting, and read awa'." + +On the next Monday I took a holiday, the first in which I had ever indulged +myself; and having spent a good hour in scrubbing away at my best shoes +and Sunday suit, started, in fear and trembling, for my uncle's +"establishment." + +I was agreeably surprised, on being shown into the little back office at +the back of the shop, to meet with a tolerably gracious reception from the +good-natured Mammonite. He did not shake hands with me, it is true;--was +I not a poor relation? But he told me to sit down, commended me for the +excellent character which he had of me both from my master and Mackaye, +and then entered on the subject of my literary tastes. He heard I was a +precious clever fellow. No wonder, I came of a clever stock; his poor dear +brother had plenty of brains for everything but business. "And you see, my +boy" (with a glance at the big ledgers and busy shop without), "I knew +a thing or two in my time, or I should not have been here. But without +capital, _I_ think brains a curse. Still we must make the best of a bad +matter; and if you are inclined to help to raise the family name--not +that I think much of book writers myself--poor starving devils, half of +them--but still people do talk about them--and a man might get a snug thing +as newspaper editor, with interest; or clerk to something or other--always +some new company in the wind now--and I should have no objection, if you +seemed likely to do us credit, to speak a word for you. I've none of your +mother's confounded puritanical notions, I can tell you; and, what's more, +I have, thank Heaven, as fine a city connexion as any man. But you must +mind and make yourself a good accountant--learn double entry on the Italian +method--that's a good practical study; and if that old Sawney is soft +enough to teach you other things gratis, he may as well teach you that +too. I'll bet he knows something about it--the old Scotch fox. There +now--that'll do--there's five shillings for you--mind you don't lose +them--and if I hear a good account of you, why, perhaps--but there's no use +making promises." + +At this moment a tall handsome young man, whom I did not at first recognize +as my cousin George, swung into the office, and shook me cordially by the +hand. + +"Hullo, Alton, how are you? Why, I hear you're coming out as a regular +genius--breaking out in a new place, upon my honour! Have you done with +him, governor?" + +"Well, I think I have. I wish you'd have a talk with him, my boy. I'm sorry +I can't see more of him, but I have to meet a party on business at the +West-end at two, and Alderman Tumbril and family dine with us this evening, +don't they? I think our small table will be full." + +"Of course it will. Come along with me, and we'll have a chat in some quiet +out-of-the-way place. This city is really so noisy that you can't hear your +own ears, as our dean says in lecture." + +So he carried me off, down back streets and alleys, a little puzzled at the +extreme cordiality of his manner. Perhaps it sprung, as I learned afterward +to suspect, from his consistent and perpetual habit of ingratiating himself +with every one whom he approached. He never cut a chimney-sweep if he +knew him. And he found it pay. The children of this world are in their +generation wiser than the children of light. + +Perhaps it sprung also, as I began to suspect in the first hundred yards of +our walk, from the desire of showing off before me the university clothes, +manners, and gossip, which he had just brought back with him from +Cambridge. + +I had not seen him more than three or four times in my life before, and +then he appeared to me merely a tall, handsome, conceited, slangy boy. But +I now found him much improved--in all externals at least. He had made it +his business, I knew, to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which +were open to a Londoner. As he told me that day--he found it pay, when one +got among gentlemen. Thus he had gone up to Cambridge a capital +skater, rower, pugilist--and billiard player. Whether or not that last +accomplishment ought to be classed in the list of athletic sports, he +contrived, by his own account, to keep it in that of paying ones. In +both these branches he seemed to have had plenty of opportunities of +distinguishing himself at college; and his tall, powerful figure showed +the fruit of these exercises in a stately and confident, almost martial, +carriage. Something jaunty, perhaps swaggering, remained still in his air +and dress, which yet sat not ungracefully on him; but I could see that he +had been mixing in society more polished and artificial than that to which +we had either of us been accustomed, and in his smart Rochester, well-cut +trousers, and delicate French boots, he excited, I will not deny it, my +boyish admiration and envy. + +"Well," he said, as soon as we were out of the shop, "which way? Got a +holiday? And how did you intend to spend it?" + +"I wanted very much," I said, meekly, "to see the pictures at the National +Gallery." + +"Oh! ah! pictures don't pay; but, if you like--much better ones at +Dulwich--that's the place to go to--you can see the others any day--and +at Dulwich, you know, they've got--why let me see--" And he ran over +half-a-dozen outlandish names of painters, which, as I have never again +met with them, I am inclined on the whole to consider as somewhat +extemporaneous creations. However, I agreed to go. + +"Ah! capital--very nice quiet walk, and convenient for me--very little out +of my way home. I'll walk there with you." + +"One word for your neighbour and two for yourself," thought I; but on +we walked. To see good pictures had been a long cherished hope of mine. +Everything beautiful in form or colour was beginning of late to have an +intense fascination for me. I had, now that I was emancipated, gradually +dared to feed my greedy eyes by passing stares into the print-shop windows, +and had learnt from them a thousand new notions, new emotions, new longings +after beauties of Nature, which seemed destined never to be satisfied. But +pictures, above all, foreign ones, had been in my mother's eyes, Anathema +Maranatha, as vile Popish and Pagan vanities, the rags of the scarlet woman +no less than the surplice itself--and now, when it came to the point, I +hesitated at an act of such awful disobedience, even though unknown to +her. My cousin, however, laughed down my scruples, told me I was out of +leading-strings now, and, which was true enough, that it was "a * * * * +deal better to amuse oneself in picture galleries without leave, than live +a life of sneaking and lying under petticoat government, as all home-birds +were sure to do in the long-run." And so I went on, while my cousin kept up +a running fire of chat the whole way, intermixing shrewd, bold observations +upon every woman who passed, with sneers at the fellows of the college to +which we were going--their idleness and luxury--the large grammar-school +which they were bound by their charter to keep up, and did not--and hints +about private interest in high quarters, through which their wealthy +uselessness had been politely overlooked, when all similar institutions +in the kingdom were subject to the searching examination of a government +commission. Then there were stories of boat-races and gay noblemen, +breakfast parties, and lectures on Greek plays flavoured with a spice of +Cambridge slang, all equally new to me--glimpses into a world of wonders, +which made me feel, as I shambled along at his side, trying to keep step +with his strides, more weakly and awkward and ignorant than ever. + +We entered the gallery. I was in a fever of expectation. + +The rich sombre light of the rooms, the rich heavy warmth of the +stove-heated air, the brilliant and varied colouring and gilded frames +which embroidered the walls, the hushed earnestness of a few artists, +who were copying, and the few visitors who were lounging from picture to +picture, struck me at once with mysterious awe. But my attention was in a +moment concentrated on one figure opposite to me at the furthest end. I +hurried straight towards it. When I had got half-way up the gallery I +looked round for my cousin. He had turned aside to some picture of a Venus +which caught my eye also, but which, I remember now, only raised in me then +a shudder and a blush, and a fancy that the clergymen must be really as +bad as my mother had taught me to believe, if they could allow in their +galleries pictures of undressed women. I have learnt to view such things +differently now, thank God. I have learnt that to the pure all things are +pure. I have learnt the meaning of that great saying--the foundation of all +art, as well as all modesty, all love, which tells us how "the man and his +wife were both naked, and not ashamed." But this book is the history of my +mental growth; and my mistakes as well as my discoveries are steps in that +development, and may bear a lesson in them. + +How I have rambled! But as that day was the turning-point of my whole short +life, I may be excused for lingering upon every feature of it. + +Timidly, but eagerly, I went up to the picture, and stood entranced before +it. It was Guido's St. Sebastian. All the world knows the picture, and all +the world knows, too, the defects of the master, though in this instance he +seems to have risen above himself, by a sudden inspiration, into that true +naturalness, which is the highest expression of the Spiritual. But the +very defects of the picture, its exaggeration, its theatricality, were +especially calculated to catch the eye of a boy awaking out of the narrow +dulness of Puritanism. The breadth and vastness of light and shade upon +those manly limbs, so grand and yet so delicate, standing out against the +background of lurid night, the helplessness of the bound arms, the arrow +quivering in the shrinking side, the upturned brow, the eyes in whose dark +depths enthusiastic faith seemed conquering agony and shame, the parted +lips, which seemed to ask, like those martyrs in the Revelations, +reproachful, half-resigned, "O Lord, how long?"--Gazing at that picture +since, I have understood how the idolatry of painted saints could arise in +the minds even of the most educated, who were not disciplined by that stern +regard for fact which is--or ought to be--the strength of Englishmen. I +have understood the heart of that Italian girl, whom some such picture of +St. Sebastian, perhaps this very one, excited, as the Venus of Praxiteles +the Grecian boy, to hopeless love, madness, and death. Then I had never +heard of St. Sebastian. I did not dream of any connexion between that, or +indeed any picture, and Christianity; and yet, as I stood before it, I +seemed to be face to face with the ghosts of my old Puritan forefathers, to +see the spirit which supported them on pillories and scaffolds--the spirit +of that true St. Margaret, the Scottish maiden whom Claverhouse and his +soldiers chained to a post on the sea-sands to die by inches in the rising +tide, till the sound of her hymns was slowly drowned in the dash of the +hungry leaping waves. My heart swelled within me, my eyes seemed bursting +from my head with the intensity of my gaze, and great tears, I knew not +why, rolled slowly down my face. + +A woman's voice close to me, gentle yet of deeper tone than most, woke me +from my trance. + +"You seem to be deeply interested in that picture?" + +I looked round, yet not at the speaker. My eyes before they could meet +hers, were caught by an apparition the most beautiful I had ever yet +beheld. And what--what--have I seen equal to her since? Strange, that I +should love to talk of her. Strange, that I fret at myself now because +I cannot set down on paper line by line, and hue by hue, that wonderful +loveliness of which--. But no matter. Had I but such an imagination as +Petrarch, or rather, perhaps, had I his deliberate cold self-consciousness, +what volumes of similes and conceits I might pour out, connecting that +peerless face and figure with all lovely things which heaven and earth +contain. As it is, because I cannot say all, I will say nothing, but repeat +to the end again and again, Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beyond all +statue, picture, or poet's dream. Seventeen--slight but rounded, a +masque and features delicate and regular, as if fresh from the chisel of +Praxiteles--I must try to describe after all, you see--a skin of alabaster +(privet-flowers, Horace and Ariosto would have said, more true to Nature), +stained with the faintest flush; auburn hair, with that peculiar crisped +wave seen in the old Italian pictures, and the warm, dark hazel eyes which +so often accompany it; lips like a thread of vermillion, somewhat too thin, +perhaps--but I thought little of that then; with such perfect finish and +grace in every line and hue of her features and her dress, down to the +little fingers and nails, which showed through her thin gloves, that she +seemed to my fancy fresh from the innermost chamber of some enchanted +palace, "where no air of heaven could visit her cheek too roughly." I +dropped my eyes quite dazzled. The question was repeated by a lady +who stood with her, whose face I remarked then--as I did to the last, +alas!--too little; dazzled at the first by outward beauty, perhaps because +so utterly unaccustomed to it. + +"It is indeed a wonderful picture," I said, timidly. "May I ask what is the +subject of it?" + +"Oh! don't you know?" said the young beauty, with a smile that thrilled +through me. "It is St. Sebastian." + +"I--I am very much ashamed," I answered, colouring up, "but I do not know +who St. Sebastian was. Was he a Popish saint?" + +A tall, stately old man, who stood with the two ladies, laughed kindly. +"No, not till they made him one against his will; and at the same time, by +putting him into the mill which grinds old folks young again, converted him +from a grizzled old Roman tribune into the young Apollo of Popery." + +"You will puzzle your hearer, my dear uncle," said the same deep-toned +woman's voice which had first spoken to me. "As you volunteered the saint's +name, Lillian, you shall also tell his history." + +Simply and shortly, with just feeling enough to send through me a fresh +thrill of delighted interest, without trenching the least on the most +stately reserve, she told me the well known history of the saint's +martyrdom. + +If I seem minute in my description, let those who read my story remember +that such courteous dignity, however natural, I am bound to believe, it +is to them, was to me an utterly new excellence in human nature. All my +mother's Spartan nobleness of manner seemed unexpectedly combined with all +my little sister's careless ease. + +"What a beautiful poem the story would make!" said I, as soon as I +recovered my thoughts. + +"Well spoken, young man," answered the old gentleman. "Let us hope that +your seeing a subject for a good poem will be the first step towards your +writing one." + +As he spoke, he bent on me two clear grey eyes, full of kindliness, mingled +with practised discernment. I saw that he was evidently a clergyman; but +what his tight silk stockings and peculiar hat denoted I did not know. +There was about him the air of a man accustomed equally to thought, to men, +and to power. And I remarked somewhat maliciously, that my cousin, who had +strutted up towards us on seeing me talking to two ladies, the instant +he caught sight of those black silk stockings and that strange hat, +fell suddenly in countenance, and sidling off somewhat meekly into the +background, became absorbed in the examination of a Holy Family. + +I answered something humbly, I forget what, which led to a conversation. +They questioned me as to my name, my mother, my business, my studies; while +I revelled in the delight of stolen glances at my new-found Venus Victrix, +who was as forward as any of them in her questions and her interest. +Perhaps she enjoyed, at least she could not help seeing, the admiration +for herself which I took no pains to conceal. At last the old man cut the +conversation short by a quiet "Good morning, sir," which astonished me. I +had never heard words whose tone was so courteous and yet so chillingly +peremptory. As they turned away, he repeated to himself once or twice, +as if to fix them in his mind, my name and my master's, and awoke in me, +perhaps too thoughtlessly, a tumult of vain hopes. Once and again the +beauty and her companion looked back towards me, and seemed talking of +me, and my face was burning scarlet, when my cousin swung up in his hard, +off-hand way. + +"By Jove, Alton, my boy! you're a knowing fellow. I congratulate you! At +your years, indeed! to rise a dean and two beauties at the first throw, and +hook them fast!" + +"A dean!" I said, in some trepidation. + +"Ay, a live dean--didn't you see the cloven foot sticking out from under +his shoe-buckle? What news for your mother! What will the ghosts of your +grandfathers to the seventh generation say to this, Alton? Colloquing in +Pagan picture galleries with shovel-hatted Philistines! And that's not the +worst, Alton," he ran on. "Those daughters of Moab--those daughters of +Moab--." + +"Hold your tongue," I said, almost crying with vexation. + +"Look there, if you want to save your good temper. There, she is looking +back again--not at poor me, though. What a lovely girl she is!--and a real +lady--_l'air noble_--the real genuine grit, as Sam Slick says, and no +mistake. By Jove, what a face! what hands! what feet! what a figure--in +spite of crinolines and all abominations! And didn't she know it? And +didn't she know that you knew it too?" And he ran on descanting coarsely on +beauties which I dared not even have profaned by naming, in a way that made +me, I knew not why, mad with jealousy and indignation. She seemed mine +alone in all the world. What right had any other human being, above all, +he, to dare to mention her? I turned again to my St. Sebastian. That +movement only brought on me a fresh volley of banter. + +"Oh, that's the dodge, is it, to catch intellectual fine ladies?--to fall +into an ecstatic attitude before a picture--But then we must have Alton's +genius, you know, to find out which the fine pictures are. I must read up +that subject, by-the-by. It might be a paying one among the dons. For +the present, here goes in for an attitude. Will this do, Alton?" And he +arranged himself admiringly before the picture in an attitude so absurd and +yet so graceful, that I did not know whether to laugh at him or hate him. + +"At all events," he added, dryly, "it will be as good as playing the +Evangelical at Carus's tea-parties, or taking the sacrament regularly for +fear one's testimonials should be refused." And then he looked at me, and +through me, in his intense, confident way, to see that his hasty words had +not injured him with me. He used to meet one's eye as boldly as any man I +ever saw; but it was not the simple gaze of honesty and innocence, but an +imperious, searching look, as if defying scrutiny. His was a true mesmeric +eye, if ever there was one. No wonder it worked the miracles it did. + +"Come along," he said, suddenly seizing my arm. "Don't you see they're +leaving? Out of the gallery after them, and get a good look at the carriage +and the arms upon it. I saw one standing there as we came in. It may pay +us--you, that is--to know it again." + +We went out, I holding him back, I knew not why, and arrived at the outer +gate just in time to see them enter the carriage and drive off. I gazed to +the last, but did not stir. + +"Good boy," he said, "knowing still. If you had bowed, or showed the least +sign of recognition, you would have broken the spell." + +But I hardly heard what he said, and stood gazing stupidly after the +carriage as it disappeared. I did not know then what had happened to me. I +know now, alas! too well. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +FIRST LOVE. + + +Truly I said, I did not know what had happened to me. I did not attempt to +analyse the intense, overpowering instinct which from that moment made the +lovely vision I had seen the lodestar of all my thoughts. Even now, I can +see nothing in those feelings of mine but simple admiration--idolatry, if +you will--of physical beauty. Doubtless there was more--doubtless--I had +seen pretty faces before, and knew that they were pretty, but they had +passed from my retina, like the prints of beauties which I saw in the +shop windows, without exciting a thought--even a conscious emotion of +complacency. But this face did not pass away. Day and night I saw it, just +as I had seen it in the gallery. The same playful smile--the same glance +alternately turned to me, and the glowing picture above her head--and that +was all I saw or felt. No child ever nestled upon its mother's shoulder +with feelings more celestially pure, than those with which I counted +over day and night each separate lineament of that exceeding loveliness. +Romantic? extravagant? Yes; if the world be right in calling a passion +romantic just in proportion as it is not merely hopeless, but pure and +unselfish, drawing its delicious power from no hope or faintest desire of +enjoyment, but merely from simple delight in its object--then my passion +was most romantic. I never thought of disparity in rank. Why should I? That +could not blind the eyes of my imagination. She was beautiful, and that was +all, and all in all to me; and had our stations been exchanged, and more +than exchanged; had I been King Cophetua, or she the beggar-maid, I should +have gloried in her just as much. + +Beloved sleepless hours, which I spent in picturing that scene to myself, +with all the brilliance of fresh recollection! Beloved hours! how soon +you pass away! Soon--soon my imagination began to fade; the traces of her +features on my mind's eye became confused and dim; and then came over me +the fierce desire to see her again, that I might renew the freshness of +that charming image. Thereon grew up an agony of longing--an agony of +weeks, and months, and years. Where could I find that face again? was my +ruling thought from morning till eve. I knew that it was hopeless to look +for her at the gallery where I had first seen her. My only hope was, that +at some place of public resort at the West End I might catch, if but for a +moment, an inspiring glance of that radiant countenance. I lingered round +the Burton Arch and Hyde Park Gate--but in vain. I peered into every +carriage, every bonnet that passed me in the thoroughfares--in vain. I +stood patiently at the doors of exhibitions and concerts, and playhouses, +to be shoved back by policemen, and insulted by footmen--but in vain. Then +I tried the fashionable churches, one by one; and sat in the free seats, +to listen to prayers and sermons, not a word of which, alas! I cared to +understand, with my eyes searching carefully every pew and gallery, face +by face; always fancying, in self-torturing waywardness, that she might be +just in the part of the gallery which I could not see. Oh! miserable +days of hope deferred, making the heart sick! Miserable gnawing of +disappointment with which I returned at nightfall, to force myself down to +my books! Equally miserable rack of hope on which my nerves were stretched +every morning when I rose, counting the hours till my day's work should be +over, and my mad search begin again! At last "my torment did by length of +time become my element." I returned steadily as ever to the studies which +I had at first neglected, much to Mackaye's wonder and disgust; and a vain +hunt after that face became a part of my daily task, to be got through with +the same dull, sullen effort, with which all I did was now transacted. + +Mackaye, I suppose, at first, attributed my absences and idleness to my +having got into bad company. But it was some weeks before he gently enough +told me his suspicions, and they were answered by a burst of tears, and a +passionate denial, which set them at rest forever. But I had not courage to +tell him what was the matter with me. A sacred modesty, as well as a sense +of the impossibility of explaining my emotions, held me back. I had a +half-dread, too, to confess the whole truth, of his ridiculing a fancy, +to say the least, so utterly impracticable; and my only confidant was +a picture in the National Gallery, in one of the faces of which I had +discovered some likeness to my Venus; and there I used to go and stand +at spare half hours, and feel the happier for staring and staring, and +whispering to the dead canvas the extravagances of my idolatry. + +But soon the bitter draught of disappointment began to breed harsher +thoughts in me. Those fine gentlemen who rode past me in the park, who +rolled by in carriages, sitting face to face with ladies, as richly +dressed, if not as beautiful, as she was--they could see her when they +liked--why not I? What right had their eyes to a feast denied to mine? +They, too, who did not appreciate, adore that beauty as I did--for who +could worship her like me? At least they had not suffered for her as I +had done; they had not stood in rain and frost, fatigue, and blank +despair--watching--watching--month after month; and I was making coats for +them! The very garment I was stitching at, might, in a day's time, be in +her presence--touching her dress; and its wearer bowing, and smiling, and +whispering--he had not bought that bliss by watching in the ram. It made me +mad to think of it. + +I will say no more about it. That is a period of my life on which I cannot +even now look back without a shudder. + +At last, after perhaps a year or more, I summoned up courage to tell my +story to Sandy Mackaye, and burst out with complaints more pardonable, +perhaps, than reasonable. + +"Why have I not as good a right to speak to her, to move in the same +society in which she moves, as any of the fops of the day? Is it because +these aristocrats are more intellectual than I? I should not fear to +measure brains against most of them now; and give me the opportunities +which they have, and I would die if I did not outstrip them. Why have I not +those opportunities? Is that fault of others to be visited on me? Is it +because they are more refined than I? What right have they, if this said +refinement be so necessary a qualification, a difference so deep--that, +without it, there is to be an everlasting gulf between man and man--what +right have they to refuse to let me share in it, to give me the opportunity +of acquiring it?" + +"Wad ye ha' them set up a dancing academy for working men, wi' 'manners +tocht here to the lower classes'? They'll no break up their ain monopoly; +trust them for it! Na: if ye want to get amang them, I'll tell ye the +way o't. Write a book o' poems, and ca' it 'A Voice fra' the Goose, by a +working Tailor'--and then--why, after a dizen years or so of starving and +scribbling for your bread, ye'll ha' a chance o' finding yoursel' a lion, +and a flunkey, and a licker o' trenchers--ane that jokes for his dinner, +and sells his soul for a fine leddy's smile--till ye presume to think +they're in earnest, and fancy yoursel' a man o' the same blude as they, and +fa' in love wi' one o' them--and then they'll teach you your level, and +send ye off to gauge whusky like Burns, or leave ye' to die in a ditch as +they did wi' puir Thom." + +"Let me die, anywhere or anyhow, if I can but be near her--see her--" + +"Married to anither body?--and nursing anither body's bairns. Ah boy, +boy--do ye think that was what ye were made for; to please yersel wi' a +woman's smiles, or e'en a woman's kisses--or to please yersel at all? How +do ye expect ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at a', as long as ye go +on looking to enjoy yersel--yersel? I ha' tried it. Mony was the year I +looked for nought but my ain pleasure, and got it too, when it was a' + + "Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye, + There he sits singing the lang simmer's day; + Lassies gae to him, + And kiss him, and woo him-- + Na bird is sa merry as Sandy Mackaye. + +"An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm talking like a sour, +disappointed auld carle. But I tell ye nay. I've got that's worth living +for, though I am downhearted at times, and fancy a's wrong, and there's na +hope for us on earth, we be a' sic liars--a' liars, I think: 'a universal +liars--rock substrawtum,' as Mr. Carlyle says. I'm a great liar often +mysel, especially when I'm praying. Do ye think I'd live on here in this +meeserable crankit auld bane-barrel o' a body, if it was not for The Cause, +and for the puir young fellows that come in to me whiles to get some +book-learning about the gran' auld Roman times, when folks didna care for +themselves, but for the nation, and a man counted wife and bairns and money +as dross and dung, in comparison wi' the great Roman city, that was the +mither o' them a', and wad last on, free and glorious, after they and their +bairns were a' dead thegither? Hoot, man! If I had na The Cause to care for +and to work for, whether I ever see it triumphant on earth or no--I'd just +tak' the cauld-water-cure off Waterloo-bridge, and mak' mysel a case for +the Humane Society." + +"And what is The Cause?" I asked. + +"Wud I tell ye? We want no ready-made freens o' The Cause. I dinna hauld +wi' thae French indoctrinating pedants, that took to stick free opinions +into a man as ye'd stick pins into a pincushion, to fa' out again the first +shake. Na--The Cause must find a man, and tak' hauld o' him, willy-nilly, +and grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can see nocht but in the +light o't. Puir bairn!" he went on, looking with a half-sad, half-comic +face at me--"puir bairn--like a young bear, wi' a' your sorrows before ye! +This time seven years ye'll ha' no need to come speering and questioning +what The Cause is, and the Gran' Cause, and the Only Cause worth working +for on the earth o' God. And noo gang your gate, and mak' fine feathers for +foul birds. I'm gaun whar ye'll be ganging too, before lang." + +As I went sadly out of the shop, he called me back. + +"Stay a wee, bairn; there's the Roman History for ye. There ye'll read what +The Cause is, and how they that seek their ain are no worthy thereof." + +I took the book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and Cocles, and +Scævola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, what +The Cause was, and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and +patriotic self-sacrifice my own selfish longings and sorrows. + + * * * * * + +But, after all, the very advice which was meant to cure me of those selfish +longings, only tended, by diverting me from my living outward idol, to turn +my thoughts more than ever inward, and tempt them to feed on their +own substance. I passed whole days on the workroom floor in brooding +silence--my mind peopled with an incoherent rabble of phantasms patched +up from every object of which I had ever read. I could not control my +daydreams; they swept me away with them over sea and land, and into the +bowels of the earth. My soul escaped on every side from my civilized +dungeon of brick and mortar, into the great free world from which my body +was debarred. Now I was the corsair in the pride of freedom on the dark +blue sea. Now I wandered in fairy caverns among the bones of primæval +monsters. I fought at the side of Leonidas, and the Maccabee who stabbed +the Sultan's elephant, and saw him crushed beneath its falling bulk. Now +I was a hunter in tropic forests--I heard the parrots scream, and saw the +humming birds flit on from gorgeous flower to flower. Gradually I took +a voluntary pleasure in calling up these images, and working out their +details into words with all the accuracy and care for which my small +knowledge gave me materials. And as the self-indulgent habit grew on me, +I began to live two lives--one mechanical and outward, one inward and +imaginative. The thread passed through my fingers without my knowing it; +I did my work as a machine might do it. The dingy stifling room, the wan +faces of my companions, the scanty meals which I snatched, I saw dimly, as +in a dream. The tropics, and Greece, the imaginary battles which I fought, +the phantoms into whose mouths I put my thoughts, were real and true to +me. They met me when I woke--they floated along beside me as I walked to +work--they acted their fantastic dramas before me through the sleepless +hours of night. Gradually certain faces among them became familiar--certain +personages grew into coherence, as embodiments of those few types of +character which had struck me the most, and played an analogous part in +every fresh fantasia. Sandy Mackaye's face figured incongruously enough as +Leonidas, Brutus, a Pilgrim Father; and gradually, in spite of myself, and +the fear with which I looked on the recurrence of that dream, Lillian's +figure re-entered my fairy-land. I saved her from a hundred dangers; I +followed her through dragon-guarded caverns and the corridors of magic +castles; I walked by her side through the forests of the Amazon.... + +And now I began to crave for some means of expressing these fancies +to myself. While they were mere thoughts, parts of me, they were +unsatisfactory, however delicious. I longed to put them outside me, that I +might look at them and talk to them as permanent independent things. First +I tried to sketch them on the whitewashed walls of my garret, on scraps +of paper begged from Mackaye, or picked up in the workroom. But from my +ignorance of any rules of drawing, they were utterly devoid of beauty, and +only excited my disgust. Besides, I had thoughts as well as objects to +express--thoughts strange, sad, wild, about my own feelings, my own +destiny, and drawing could not speak them for me. + +Then I turned instinctively to poetry: with its rules I was getting rapidly +conversant. The mere desire of imitation urged me on, and when I tried, the +grace of rhyme and metre covered a thousand defects. I tell my story, not +as I saw it then, but as I see it now. A long and lonely voyage, with its +monotonous days and sleepless nights--its sickness and heart-loneliness, +has given me opportunities for analysing my past history which were +impossible then, amid the ceaseless in-rush of new images, the ceaseless +ferment of their re-combination, in which my life was passed from sixteen +to twenty-five. The poet, I suppose, must be a seer as long as he is a +worker, and a seer only. He has no time to philosophize--to "think about +thinking," as Goethe, I have somewhere read, says that he never could do. +It is too often only in sickness and prostration and sheer despair, that +the fierce veracity and swift digestion of his soul can cease, and give him +time to know himself and God's dealings with him; and for that reason it is +good for him, too, to have been afflicted. + +I do not write all this to boast of it; I am ready to bear sneers at my +romance--my day-dreams--my unpractical habits of mind, for I know that I +deserve them. But such was the appointed growth of my uneducated mind; no +more unhealthy a growth, if I am to believe books, than that of many a +carefully trained one. Highborn geniuses, they tell me, have their idle +visions as well as we working-men; and Oxford has seen of late years as +wild Icarias conceived as ever were fathered by a red Republic. For, +indeed, we have the same flesh and blood, the same God to teach us, the +same devil to mislead us, whether we choose to believe it or not. But there +were excuses for me. We Londoners are not accustomed from our youth to the +poems of a great democratic genius, as the Scotchmen are to their glorious +Burns. We have no chance of such an early acquaintance with poetic art +as that which enabled John Bethune, one of the great unrepresented--the +starving Scotch day-labourer, breaking stones upon the parish roads, to +write at the age of seventeen such words as these:-- + + Hail, hallow'd evening! sacred hour to me! + Thy clouds of grey, thy vocal melody, + Thy dreamy silence oft to me have brought + A sweet exchange from toil to peaceful thought. + Ye purple heavens! how often has my eye, + Wearied with its long gaze on drudgery, + Look'd up and found refreshment in the hues + That gild thy vest with colouring profuse! + + O, evening grey! how oft have I admired + Thy airy tapestry, whose radiance fired + The glowing minstrels of the olden time, + Until their very souls flow'd forth in rhyme. + And I have listened, till my spirit grew + Familiar with their deathless strains, and drew + From the same source some portion of the glow + Which fill'd their spirits, when from earth below + They scann'd thy golden imagery. And I + Have consecrated _thee_, bright evening sky + My fount of inspiration; and I fling + My spirit on thy clouds--an offering + To the great Deity of dying day. + Who hath transfused o'er thee his purple ray. + * * * * * + +After all, our dreams do little harm to the rich. Those who consider +Chartism as synonymous with devil-worship, should bless and encourage them, +for the very reason for which we working men ought to dread them; for, +quickened into prurient activity by the low, novel-mongering press, they +help to enervate and besot all but the noblest minds among us. Here and +there a Thomas Cooper, sitting in Stafford gaol, after a youth spent in +cobbling shoes, vents his treasures of classic and historic learning in a +"Purgatory of Suicides"; or a Prince becomes the poet of the poor, no +less for having fed his boyish fancy with "The Arabian Nights" and "The +Pilgrim's Progress." But, with the most of us, sedentary and +monotonous occupations, as has long been known, create of themselves a +morbidly-meditative and fantastic turn of mind. And what else, in +Heaven's name, ye fine gentlemen--what else can a working man do with +his imagination, but dream? What else will you let him do with it, oh ye +education-pedants, who fancy that you can teach the masses as you would +drill soldiers, every soul alike, though you will not bestir yourselves +to do even that? Are there no differences of rank--God's rank, not +man's--among us? You have discovered, since your schoolboy days, the +fallacy of the old nomenclature which civilly classed us altogether as "the +snobs," "the blackguards"; which even--so strong is habit--tempted +Burke himself to talk of us as "the swinish multitude." You are finding +yourselves wrong there. A few more years' experience not in mis-educating +the poor, but in watching the poor really educate themselves, may teach you +that we are not all by nature dolts and idiots; that there are differences +of brain among us, just as great as there is between you; and that there +are those among us whose education ought not to end, and will not end, with +the putting off of the parish cap and breeches; whom it is cruelty, as well +as folly, to toss back into the hell of mere manual drudgery, as soon as +you have--if, indeed, you have been even so bountiful as that--excited in +them a new thirst of the intellect and imagination. If you provide that +craving with no wholesome food, you at least have no right to blame it if +it shall gorge itself with poison. + +Dare for once to do a strange thing, and let yourself be laughed at; go to +a workman's meeting--a Chartist meeting, if you will; and look honestly +at the faces and brows of those so-called incendiaries, whom your venal +caricaturists have taught you to believe a mixture of cur-dog and +baboon--we, for our part, shall not be ashamed to show foreheads against +your laughing House of Commons--and then say, what employment can those men +find in the soulless routine of mechanical labour for the mass of brain +which they almost universally possess? They must either dream or agitate; +perhaps they are now learning how to do both to some purpose. + +But I have found, by sad experience, that there is little use in +declamation. I had much better simply tell my story, and leave my readers +to judge of the facts, if, indeed, they will be so far courteous as to +believe them. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE. + + +So I made my first attempt at poetry--need I say that my subject was the +beautiful Lillian? And need I say, too, that I was as utterly disgusted +at my attempt to express her in words, as I had been at my trial with the +pencil? It chanced also, that after hammering out half a dozen verses, I +met with Mr. Tennyson's poems; and the unequalled sketches of women that I +found there, while they had, with the rest of the book, a new and +abiding influence on my mind, were quite enough to show me my own fatal +incompetency in that line. I threw my verses away, never to resume them. +Perhaps I proved thereby the depth of my affection. Our mightiest feelings, +are always those which remain most unspoken. The most intense lovers and +the greatest poets have generally, I think, written very little personal +love-poetry, while they have shown in fictitious characters a knowledge of +the passion too painfully intimate to be spoken of in the first person. + +But to escape from my own thoughts, I could not help writing something; and +to escape from my own private sorrows, writing on some matter with which +I had no personal concern. And so, after much casting about for subjects, +Childe Harold and the old missionary records contrived to celebrate +a spiritual wedding in my brain, of which anomalous marriage came a +proportionately anomalous offspring. + +My hero was not to be a pirate, but a pious sea-rover, who, with a crew of +saints, or at least uncommonly fine fellows, who could be very manly +and jolly, and yet all be good Christians, of a somewhat vague and +latitudinarian cast of doctrine (for my own was becoming rapidly so), +set forth under the red-cross flag to colonize and convert one of my old +paradises, a South Sea Island. + +I forget most of the lines--they were probably great trash, but I hugged +them to my bosom as a young mother does her first child. + + 'Twas sunset in the lone Pacific world, + The rich gleams fading in the western sky; + Within the still Lagoon the sails were furled, + The red-cross flag alone was flaunting high. + Before them was the low and palm-fringed shore, + Behind, the outer ocean's baffled roar. + +After which valiant plunge _in medias res_, came a great lump of deception, +after the manner of youths--of the island, and the whitehouses, and the +banana groves, and above all, the single volcano towering over the whole, +which + + Shaking a sinful isle with thundering shocks, + Reproved the worshippers of stones and stocks. + +Then how a line of foam appears on the Lagoon, which is supposed at +first to be a shoal of fish, but turns out to be a troop of naked island +beauties, swimming out to the ship. The decent missionaries were certainly +guiltless of putting that into my head, whether they ever saw it or not--a +great many things happening in the South Seas of which they find it +convenient to say nothing. I think I picked it up from Wallis, or Cook, or +some other plain spoken voyager. + +The crew gaze in pardonable admiration, but the hero, in a long speech, +reproves them for their lightmindedness, reminds them of their sacred +mission, and informs them that, + + The soldiers of the cross should turn their eyes + From carnal lusts and heathen vanities; + +beyond which indisputable assertion I never got; for this being about +the fiftieth stanza, I stopped to take breath a little; and reading and +re-reading, patching and touching continually, grew so accustomed to my +bantling's face, that, like a mother, I could not tell whether it was +handsome or hideous, sense or nonsense. I have since found out that the +true plan, for myself at least, is to write off as much as possible at a +time, and then lay it by and forget it for weeks--if I can, for months. +After that, on returning to it, the mind regards it as something altogether +strange and new, and can, or rather ought to, judge of it as it would of +the work of another pen. + +But really, between conceit and disgust, fancying myself one day a great +new poet, and the next a mere twaddler, I got so puzzled and anxious, that +I determined to pluck up courage, go to Mackaye, and ask him to solve the +problem for me. + +"Hech, sirs, poetry! I've been expecting it. I suppose it's the appointed +gate o' a workman's intellectual life--that same lust o' versification. +Aweel, aweel,--let's hear." + +Blushing and trembling, I read my verses aloud in as resonant and +magniloquent a voice as I could command. I thought Mackaye's upper lip +would never stop lengthening, or his lower lip protruding. He chuckled +intensely at the unfortunate rhyme between "shocks" and "stocks." Indeed, +it kept him in chuckling matter for a whole month afterwards; but when I +had got to the shoal of naked girls, he could bear no more, and burst out-- + +"What the deevil! is there no harlotry and idolatry here in England, that +ye maun gang speering after it in the Cannibal Islands? Are ye gaun to be +like they puir aristocrat bodies, that wad suner hear an Italian dog howl, +than an English nightingale sing, and winna harken to Mr. John Thomas +till he calls himself Giovanni Thomasino; or do ye tak yourself for a +singing-bird, to go all your days tweedle-dumdeeing out into the lift, +just for the lust o' hearing your ain clan clatter? Will ye be a man or a +lintic? Coral Islands? Pacific? What do ye ken about Pacifics? Are ye a +Cockney or a Cannibal Islander? Dinna stand there, ye gowk, as fusionless +as a docken, but tell me that! Whaur do ye live?" + +"What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye?" asked I, with a doleful and disappointed +visage. + +"Mean--why, if God had meant ye to write aboot Pacifics, He'd ha' put ye +there--and because He means ye to write aboot London town, He's put ye +there--and gien ye an unco sharp taste o' the ways o't; and I'll gie ye +anither. Come along wi' me." + +And he seized me by the arm, and hardly giving me time to put on my hat, +marched me out into the streets, and away through Clare Market to St. +Giles's. + +It was a foul, chilly, foggy Saturday night. From the butchers' and +greengrocers' shops the gas lights flared and flickered, wild and ghastly, +over haggard groups of slip-shod dirty women, bargaining for scraps of +stale meat and frost-bitten vegetables, wrangling about short weight and +bad quality. Fish-stalls and fruit-stalls lined the edge of the greasy +pavement, sending up odours as foul as the language of sellers and buyers. +Blood and sewer-water crawled from under doors and out of spouts, and +reeked down the gutters among offal, animal and vegetable, in every stage +of putrefaction. Foul vapours rose from cowsheds and slaughter houses, and +the doorways of undrained alleys, where the inhabitants carried the filth +out on their shoes from the back-yard into the court, and from the court +up into the main street; while above, hanging like cliffs over the +streets--those narrow, brawling torrents of filth, and poverty, and +sin,--the houses with their teeming load of life were piled up into the +dingy, choking night. A ghastly, deafening sickening sight it was. Go, +scented Belgravian! and see what London is! and then go to the library +which God has given thee--one often fears in vain--and see what science +says this London might be! + +"Ay," he muttered to himself, as he strode along, "sing awa; get yoursel +wi' child wi' pretty fancies and gran' words, like the rest o' the poets, +and gang to hell for it." + +"To hell, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie--a warse ane than ony +fiends' kitchen, or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the +pulpits--the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless +peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures--and kenning +it--and not being able to get oot o' it, for the chains o' vanity and +self-indulgence. I've warned ye. Now look there--" + +He stopped suddenly before the entrance of a miserable alley-- + +"Look! there's not a soul down that yard but's either beggar, drunkard, +thief, or warse. Write anent that! Say how you saw the mouth o' hell, and +the twa pillars thereof at the entry--the pawnbroker's shop o' one side, +and the gin palace at the other--twa monstrous deevils, eating up men, and +women, and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o' the monsters, how +they open and open, and swallow in anither victim and anither. Write anent +that." + +"What jaws, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"They faulding-doors o' the gin shop, goose. Are na they a mair damnable +man-devouring idol than ony red-hot statue o' Moloch, or wicker Gogmagog, +wherein thae auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at thae bare-footed +bare-backed hizzies, with their arms roun' the men's necks, and their +mouths full o' vitriol and beastly words! Look at that Irishwoman pouring +the gin down the babbie's throat! Look at that rough o' a boy gaun out +o' the pawn shop, where he's been pledging the handkerchief he stole the +morning, into the gin shop, to buy beer poisoned wi' grains o' +paradise, and cocculus indicus, and saut, and a' damnable, maddening, +thirst-breeding, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in wi' +a shawl on her back and cam' out wi'out ane! Drunkards frae the +breast!--harlots frae the cradle! damned before they're born! John Calvin +had an inkling o' the truth there, I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his +reprobation deevil's doctrines!" + +"Well--but--Mr. Mackaye, I know nothing about these poor creatures." + +"Then ye ought. What do ye ken anent the Pacific? Which is maist to your +business?--thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o' the other side +o' the warld, or these--these thousands o' bare-backed hizzies that play +the harlot o' your ain side--made out o' your ain flesh and blude? You a +poet! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If ye'll +be a poet at a', ye maun be a cockney poet; and while the cockneys be what +they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o' lamentation and mourning +and woe, for the sins o' your people. Gin you want to learn the spirit o' a +people's poet, down wi' your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin +ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning till night; and gin +ye'd learn the matter, just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes open, +and ye'll no miss it." + +"But all this is so--so unpoetical." + +"Hech! Is there no the heeven above them there, and the hell beneath them? +and God frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra +idea of the classic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circumstance? +Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man +conquering circumstance?--and I'll show you that, too--in mony a garret +where no eye but the gude God's enters, to see the patience, and the +fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that's +shining in thae dark places o' the earth. Come wi' me, and see." + +We went on through a back street or two, and then into a huge, miserable +house, which, a hundred years ago, perhaps, had witnessed the luxury, and +rung to the laughter of some one great fashionable family, alone there +in their glory. Now every room of it held its family, or its group of +families--a phalanstery of all the fiends;--its grand staircase, with the +carved balustrades rotting and crumbling away piecemeal, converted into a +common sewer for all its inmates. Up stair after stair we went, while wails +of children, and curses of men, steamed out upon the hot stifling rush of +air from every doorway, till, at the topmost story, we knocked at a garret +door. We entered. Bare it was of furniture, comfortless, and freezing cold; +but, with the exception of the plaster dropping from the roof, and the +broken windows, patched with rags and paper, there was a scrupulous +neatness about the whole, which contrasted strangely with the filth and +slovenliness outside. There was no bed in the room--no table. On a broken +chair by the chimney sat a miserable old woman, fancying that she was +warming her hands over embers which had long been cold, shaking her head, +and muttering to herself, with palsied lips, about the guardians and the +workhouse; while upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl, ugly, small-pox +marked, hollow eyed, emaciated, her only bed clothes the skirt of a large +handsome new riding-habit, at which two other girls, wan and tawdry, were +stitching busily, as they sat right and left of her on the floor. The old +woman took no notice of us as we entered; but one of the girls looked up, +and, with a pleased gesture of recognition, put her finger up to her lips, +and whispered, "Ellen's asleep." + +"I'm not asleep, dears," answered a faint, unearthly voice; "I was only +praying. Is that Mr. Mackaye?" + +"Ay, my lassies; but ha' ye gotten na fire the nicht?" + +"No," said one of them, bitterly, "we've earned no fire to-night, by fair +trade or foul either." + +The sick girl tried to raise herself up and speak, but was stopped by a +frightful fit of coughing and expectoration, as painful, apparently, to the +sufferer as it was, I confess, disgusting even to me. + +I saw Mackaye slip something into the hand of one of the girls, and +whisper, "A half-hundred of coals;" to which she replied, with an eager +look of gratitude that I never can forget, and hurried out. Then the +sufferer, as if taking advantage of her absence, began to speak quickly and +eagerly. + +"Oh, Mr. Mackaye--dear, kind Mr. Mackaye--do speak to her; and do speak to +poor Lizzy here! I'm not afraid to say it before her, because she's more +gentle like, and hasn't learnt to say bad words yet--but do speak to them, +and tell them not to go the bad Way, like all the rest. Tell them it'll +never prosper. I know it is want that drives them to it, as it drives all +of us--but tell them it's best to starve and die honest girls, than to go +about with the shame and the curse of God on their hearts, for the sake of +keeping this poor, miserable, vile body together a few short years more in +this world o' sorrow. Do tell them, Mr. Mackaye." + +"I'm thinking," said he, with the tears running down his old withered face, +"ye'll mak a better preacher at that text than I shall, Ellen." + +"Oh, no, no; who am I, to speak to them?--it's no merit o' mine, Mr. +Mackaye, that the Lord's kept me pure through it all. I should have been +just as bad as any of them, if the Lord had not kept me out of temptation +in His great mercy, by making me the poor, ill-favoured creature I am. From +that time I was burnt when I was a child, and had the small-pox afterwards, +oh! how sinful I was, and repined and rebelled against the Lord! And now I +see it was all His blessed mercy to keep me out of evil, pure and unspotted +for my dear Jesus, when He comes to take me to Himself. I saw Him last +night, Mr. Mackaye, as plain as I see you now, ail in a flame of beautiful +white fire, smiling at me so sweetly; and He showed me the wounds in His +hands and His feet, and He said, 'Ellen, my own child, those that suffer +with me here, they shall be glorified with me hereafter, for I'm coming +very soon to take you home.'" + +Sandy shook his head at all this with a strange expression of face, as if +he sympathized and yet disagreed, respected and yet smiled at the shape +which her religious ideas had assumed; and I remarked in the meantime that +the poor girl's neck and arm were all scarred and distorted, apparently +from the effects of a burn. + +"Ah," said Sandy, at length, "I tauld ye ye were the better preacher of the +two; ye've mair comfort to gie Sandy than he has to gie the like o' ye. But +how is the wound in your back the day?" + +Oh, it was wonderfully better! the doctor had come and given her such +blessed ease with a great thick leather he had put under it, and then she +did not feel the boards through so much. "But oh, Mr. Mackaye, I'm so +afraid it will make me live longer to keep me away from my dear Saviour. +And there's one thing, too, that's breaking my heart, and makes me long to +die this very minute, even if I didn't go to Heaven at all, Mr. Mackaye." +(And she burst out crying, and between her sobs it came out, as well as +I could gather, that her notion was, that her illness was the cause of +keeping the girls in "_the bad ivay_," as she called it.) "For Lizzy here, +I did hope that she had repented of it after all my talking to her; but +since I've been so bad, and the girls have had to keep me most o' the time, +she's gone out of nights just as bad as ever." + +Lizzy had hid her face in her hands the greater part of this speech. Now +she looked up passionately, almost fiercely-- + +"Repent--I have repented--I repent of it every hour--I hate myself, and +hate all the world because of it; but I must--I must; I cannot see her +starve, and I cannot starve myself. When she first fell sick she kept on as +long as she could, doing what she could, and then between us we only earned +three shillings a week, and there was ever so much to take off for fire, +and twopence for thread, and fivepence for candles; and then we were always +getting fined, because they never gave us out the work till too late on +purpose, and then they lowered prices again; and now Ellen can't work at +all, and there's four of us with the old lady, to keep off two's work that +couldn't keep themselves alone." + +"Doesn't the parish allow the old lady anything?" I ventured to ask. + +"They used to allow half-a-crown for a bit; and the doctor ordered Ellen +things from the parish, but it isn't half of 'em she ever got; and when the +meat came, it was half times not fit to eat, and when it was her stomach +turned against it. If she was a lady she'd be cockered up with all sorts of +soups and jellies, and nice things, just the minute she fancied 'em, and +lie on a water bed instead of the bare floor--and so she ought; but where's +the parish'll do that? And the hospital wouldn't take her in because she +was incurable; and, besides, the old'un wouldn't let her go--nor into the +union neither. When she's in a good-humour like, she'll sit by her by the +hour, holding her hand and kissing of it, and nursing of it, for all the +world like a doll. But she won't hear of the workhouse; so now, these last +three weeks, they takes off all her pay, because they says she must go into +the house, and not kill her daughter by keeping her out--as if they warn't +a killing her themselves." + +"No workhouse--no workhouse!" said the old woman, turning round suddenly, +in a clear, lofty voice. "No workhouse, sir, for an officer's daughter!" + +And she relapsed into her stupor. + +At that moment the other girl entered with the coals--but without staying +to light the fire, ran up to Ellen with some trumpery dainty she had +bought, and tried to persuade her to eat it. + +"We have been telling Mr. Mackaye everything," said poor Lizzy. + +"A pleasant story, isn't it? Oh! if that fine lady, as we're making that +riding-habit for, would just spare only half the money that goes to +dressing her up to ride in the park, to send us out to the colonies, +wouldn't I be an honest girl there?--maybe an honest man's wife! Oh, my +God, wouldn't I slave my fingers to the bone to work for him! Wouldn't I +mend my life then! I couldn't help it--it would be like getting into heaven +out of hell. But now--we must--we must, I tell you. I shall go mad soon, I +think, or take to drink. When I passed the gin-shop down there just now, +I had to run like mad for fear I should go in; and if I once took to +that--Now then, to work again. Make up the fire, Mrs. * * * *, please do." + +And she sat down, and began stitching frantically at the riding-habit, +from which the other girl had hardly lifted her hands or eyes for a moment +during our visit. + +We made a motion, as if to go. + +"God bless you," said Ellen; "come again soon, dear Mr. Mackaye." + +"Good-bye," said the elder girl; "and good-night to you. Night and day's +all the same here--we must have this home by seven o'clock to-morrow +morning. My lady's going to ride early, they say, whoever she may be, and +we must just sit up all night. It's often we haven't had our clothes off +for a week together, from four in the morning till two the next morning +sometimes--stitch, stitch, stitch. Somebody's wrote a song about that--I'll +learn to sing it--it'll sound fitting-like up here." + +"Better sing hymns," said Ellen. + +"Hymns for * * * * * *?" answered the other, and then burst out into that +peculiar, wild, ringing, fiendish laugh--has my reader never heard it? + +I pulled out the two or three shillings which I possessed, and tried to +make the girls take them, for the sake of poor Ellen. + +"No; you're a working man, and we won't feed on you--you'll want it some +day--all the trade's going the same way as we, as fast as ever it can!" + +Sandy and I went down the stairs. + +"Poetic element? Yon lassie, rejoicing in her disfigurement and not her +beauty--like the nuns of Peterborough in auld time--is there na poetry +there? That puir lassie, dying on the bare boards, and seeing her Saviour +in her dreams, is there na poetry there, callant? That auld body owre the +fire, wi' her 'an officer's dochter,' is there na poetry there? That +ither, prostituting hersel to buy food for her freen--is there na poetry +there?--tragedy-- + + "With hues as when some mighty painter dips + His pen in dyes of earthquake and eclipse. + +"Ay, Shelley's gran'; always gran'; but Fact is grander--God and Satan are +grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are +God and Satan at death grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or +Paradise Regained; and will ye think it beneath ye to be the 'People's +Poet?'" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +POETRY AND POETS. + + +In the history of individuals, as well as in that of nations, there is +often a period of sudden blossoming--a short luxuriant summer, not without +its tornadoes and thunder-glooms, in which all the buried seeds of past +observation leap forth together into life, and form, and beauty. And such +with me were the two years that followed. I thought--I talked poetry +to myself all day long. I wrote nightly on my return from work. I am +astonished, on looking back, at the variety and quantity of my productions +during that short time. My subjects were intentionally and professedly +cockney ones. I had taken Mackaye at his word. I had made up my mind, that +if I had any poetic powers I must do my duty therewith in that station of +life to which it had pleased God to call me, and look at everything simply +and faithfully as a London artizan. To this, I suppose, is to be attributed +the little geniality and originality for which the public have kindly +praised my verses--a geniality which sprung, not from the atmosphere whence +I drew, but from the honesty and single-mindedness with which, I hope, I +laboured. Not from the atmosphere, indeed,--that was ungenial enough; crime +and poverty, all-devouring competition, and hopeless struggles against +Mammon and Moloch, amid the roar of wheels, the ceaseless stream of pale, +hard faces, intent on gain, or brooding over woe; amid endless prison walls +of brick, beneath a lurid, crushing sky of smoke and mist. It was a dark, +noisy, thunderous element that London life; a troubled sea that cannot +rest, casting up mire and dirt; resonant of the clanking of chains, the +grinding of remorseless machinery, the wail of lost spirits from the pit. +And it did its work upon me; it gave a gloomy colouring, a glare as of some +Dantean "Inferno," to all my utterances. It did not excite me or make me +fierce--I was too much inured to it--but it crushed and saddened me; it +deepened in me that peculiar melancholy of intellectual youth, which +Mr. Carlyle has christened for ever by one of his immortal +nicknames--"Werterism"; I battened on my own melancholy. I believed, I +loved to believe, that every face I passed bore the traces of discontent as +deep as was my own--and was I so far wrong? Was I so far wrong either in +the gloomy tone of my own poetry? Should not a London poet's work just now +be to cry, like the Jew of old, about the walls of Jerusalem, "Woe, woe +to this city!" Is this a time to listen to the voices of singing men and +singing women? or to cry, "Oh! that my head were a fountain of tears, that +I might weep for the sins of my people"? Is it not noteworthy, also, that +it is in this vein that the London poets have always been greatest? Which +of poor Hood's lyrics have an equal chance of immortality with "The Song of +the Shirt" and "The Bridge of Sighs," rising, as they do, right out of +the depths of that Inferno, sublime from their very simplicity? Which +of Charles Mackay's lyrics can compare for a moment with the Eschylean +grandeur, the terrible rhythmic lilt of his "Cholera Chant"-- + + Dense on the stream the vapours lay, + Thick as wool on the cold highway; + Spungy and dim each lonely lamp + Shone o'er the streets so dull and damp; + The moonbeams could not pierce the cloud + That swathed the city like a shroud; + There stood three shapes on the bridge alone, + Three figures by the coping-stone; + Gaunt and tall and undefined, + Spectres built of mist and wind. + * * * * * + I see his footmarks east and west-- + I hear his tread in the silence fall-- + He shall not sleep, he shall not rest-- + He comes to aid us one and all. + Were men as wise as men might be, + They would not work for you, for me, + For him that cometh over the sea; + But they will not hear the warning voice: + The Cholera comes,--Rejoice! rejoice! + He shall be lord of the swarming town! + And mow them down, and mow them down! + * * * * * + +Not that I neglected, on the other hand, every means of extending the +wanderings of my spirit into sunnier and more verdant pathways. If I had to +tell the gay ones above of the gloom around me, I had also to go forth into +the sunshine, to bring home if it were but a wild-flower garland to those +that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. That was all that I could +offer them. The reader shall judge, when he has read this book throughout, +whether I did not at last find for them something better than even all the +beauties of nature. + +But it was on canvas, and not among realities, that I had to choose my +garlands; and therefore the picture galleries became more than ever my +favourite--haunt, I was going to say; but, alas! it was not six times a +year that I got access to them. Still, when once every May I found myself, +by dint of a hard saved shilling, actually within the walls of that to me +enchanted palace, the Royal Academy Exhibition--Oh, ye rich! who gaze round +you at will upon your prints and pictures, if hunger is, as they say, +a better sauce than any Ude invents, and fasting itself may become the +handmaid of luxury, you should spend, as I did perforce, weeks and months +shut out from every glimpse of Nature, if you would taste her beauties, +even on canvas, with perfect relish and childish self-abandonment. How +I loved and blessed those painters! how I thanked Creswick for every +transparent shade-chequered pool; Fielding, for every rain-clad down; +Cooper, for every knot of quiet cattle beneath the cool grey willows; +Stanfield, for every snowy peak, and sheet of foam-fringed sapphire--each +and every one of them a leaf out of the magic book which else was ever +closed to me. Again, I say, how I loved and blest those painters! On the +other hand, I was not neglecting to read as well as to write poetry; and, +to speak first of the highest, I know no book, always excepting Milton, +which at once so quickened and exalted my poetical view of man and his +history, as that great prose poem, the single epic of modern days, Thomas +Carlyle's "French Revolution." Of the general effect which his works had on +me, I shall say nothing: it was the same as they have had, thank God, on +thousands of my class and of every other. But that book above all first +recalled me to the overwhelming and yet ennobling knowledge that there +was such a thing as Duty; first taught me to see in history not the mere +farce-tragedy of man's crimes and follies, but the dealings of a righteous +Ruler of the universe, whose ways are in the great deep, and whom the sins +and errors, as well as the virtues and discoveries of man, must obey and +justify. + +Then, in a happy day, I fell on Alfred Tennyson's poetry, and found there, +astonished and delighted, the embodiment of thoughts about the earth around +me which I had concealed, because I fancied them peculiar to myself. Why is +it that the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds +of the young? Surely not for the mere charm of novelty? The reason is that +he, living amid the same hopes, the same temptations, the same sphere of +observation as they, gives utterance and outward form to the very questions +which, vague and wordless, have been exercising their hearts. And what +endeared Tennyson especially to me, the working man, was, as I afterwards +discovered, the altogether democratic tendency of his poems. True, all +great poets are by their office democrats; seers of man only as man; +singers of the joys, the sorrows, the aspirations common to all humanity; +but in Alfred Tennyson there is an element especially democratic, truly +levelling; not his political opinions, about which I know nothing, and +care less, but his handling of the trivial every-day sights and sounds of +nature. Brought up, as I understand, in a part of England which possesses +not much of the picturesque, and nothing of that which the vulgar call +sublime, he has learnt to see that in all nature, in the hedgerow and the +sandbank, as well as in the alp peak and the ocean waste, is a world of +true sublimity,--a minute infinite,--an ever fertile garden of poetic +images, the roots of which are in the unfathomable and the eternal, as +truly as any phenomenon which astonishes and awes the eye. The descriptions +of the desolate pools and creeks where the dying swan floated, the hint of +the silvery marsh mosses by Mariana's moat, came to me like revelations. +I always knew there was something beautiful, wonderful, sublime, in those +flowery dykes of Battersea Fields; in the long gravelly sweeps of that lone +tidal shore; and here was a man who had put them into words for me! This +is what I call democratic art--the revelation of the poetry which lies in +common things. And surely all the age is tending in that direction: in +Landseer and his dogs--in Fielding and his downs, with a host of noble +fellow-artists--and in all authors who have really seized the nation's +mind, from Crabbe and Burns and Wordsworth to Hood and Dickens, the great +tide sets ever onward, outward, towards that which is common to the many, +not that which is exclusive to the few--towards the likeness of Him who +causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and His sun to shine on +the evil and the good; who knoweth the cattle upon a thousand hills, and +all the beasts of the field are in His sight. + +Well--I must return to my story. And here some one may ask me, "But did +you not find this true spiritual democracy, this universal knowledge and +sympathy, in Shakspeare above all other poets?" It may be my shame to have +to confess it; but though I find it now, I did not then. I do not think, +however, my case is singular: from what I can ascertain, there is, even +with regularly educated minds, a period of life at which that great writer +is not appreciated, just on account of his very greatness; on account of +the deep and large experience which the true understanding of his plays +requires--experience of man, of history, of art, and above all of those +sorrows whereby, as Hezekiah says, and as I have learnt almost too +well--"whereby men live, and in all which, is the life of the spirit." At +seventeen, indeed, I had devoured Shakspeare, though merely for the food to +my fancy which his plots and incidents supplied, for the gorgeous colouring +of his scenery: but at the period of which I am now writing, I had +exhausted that source of mere pleasure; I was craving for more explicit and +dogmatic teaching than any which he seemed to supply; and for three years, +strange as it may appear, I hardly ever looked into his pages. Under what +circumstances I afterwards recurred to his exhaustless treasures, my +readers shall in due time be told. + +So I worked away manfully with such tools and stock as I possessed, and +of course produced, at first, like all young writers, some sufficiently +servile imitations of my favourite poets. + +"Ugh!" said Sandy, "wha wants mongrels atween Burns and Tennyson? A gude +stock baith: but gin ye'd cross the breed ye maun unite the spirits, and +no the manners, o' the men. Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebor's +barnacles, before he glints out o' windows? Mak a style for yoursel, +laddie; ye're na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire laird: sae gang +yer ain gate and leave them to gang theirs; and just mak a gran', brode, +simple, Saxon style for yoursel." + +"But how can I, till I know what sort of a style it ought to be?" + +"Oh! but yon's amazing like Tom Sheridan's answer to his father. 'Tom,' +says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun tak a wife.' 'Verra weel, father,' +says the puir skellum; 'and wha's wife shall I tak?' Wha's style shall I +tak? say all the callants the noo. Mak a style as ye would mak a wife, by +marrying her a' to yoursel; and ye'll nae mair ken what's your style till +it's made, than ye'll ken what your wife's like till she's been mony a year +by your ingle." + +"My dear Mackaye," I said, "you have the most unmerciful way of raising +difficulties, and then leaving poor fellows to lay the ghost for +themselves." + +"Hech, then, I'm a'thegither a negative teacher, as they ca' it in the new +lallans. I'll gang out o' my gate to tell a man his kye are laired, but I'm +no obligated thereby to pu' them out for him. After a', nae man is rid o' a +difficulty till he's conquered it single-handed for himsel: besides, I'm na +poet, mair's the gude hap for you." + +"Why, then?" + +"Och, och! they're puir, feckless, crabbit, unpractical bodies, they poets; +but if it's your doom, ye maun dree it; and I'm sair afeard ye ha' gotten +the disease o' genius, mair's the pity, and maun write, I suppose, +willy-nilly. Some folks' booels are that made o' catgut, that they canna +stir without chirruping and screeking." + +However, _æstro percitus_, I wrote on; and in about two years and a half +had got together "Songs of the Highways" enough to fill a small octavo +volume, the circumstances of whose birth shall be given hereafter. Whether +I ever attained to anything like an original style, readers must judge for +themselves--the readers of the same volume I mean, for I have inserted none +of those poems in this my autobiography; first, because it seems too like +puffing my own works; and next, because I do not want to injure the as yet +not over great sale of the same. But, if any one's curiosity is so far +excited that he wishes to see what I have accomplished, the best advice +which I can give him is, to go forth, and buy all the working-men's +poetry which has appeared during the last twenty years, without favour or +exception; among which he must needs, of course, find mine, and also, I am +happy to say, a great deal which is much better and more instructive than +mine. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +HOW FOLKS TURN CHARTISTS. + + +Those who read my story only for amusement, I advise to skip this chapter. +Those, on the other hand, who really wish to ascertain what working men +actually do suffer--to see whether their political discontent has not its +roots, not merely in fanciful ambition, but in misery and slavery most real +and agonizing--those in whose eyes the accounts of a system, or rather +barbaric absence of all system, which involves starvation, nakedness, +prostitution, and long imprisonment in dungeons worse than the cells of the +Inquisition, will be invested with something at least of tragic interest, +may, I hope, think it worth their while to learn how the clothes which they +wear are made, and listen to a few occasional statistics, which, though +they may seem to the wealthy mere lists of dull figures, are to the workmen +symbols of terrible physical realities--of hunger, degradation, and +despair. [Footnote: Facts still worse than those which Mr. Locke's story +contains have been made public by the _Morning Chronicle_ in a series of +noble letters on "Labour and the Poor"; which we entreat all Christian +people to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." "That will be better +for them," as Mahomet, in similar cases, used to say.] + +Well: one day our employer died. He had been one of the old sort of +fashionable West-end tailors in the fast decreasing honourable trade; +keeping a modest shop, hardly to be distinguished from a dwelling-house, +except by his name on the window blinds. He paid good prices for work, +though not as good, of course, as he had given twenty years before, and +prided himself upon having all his work done at home. His workrooms, as I +have said, were no elysiums; but still, as good, alas! as those of three +tailors out of four. He was proud, luxurious, foppish; but he was honest +and kindly enough, and did many a generous thing by men who had been long +in his employ. At all events, his journeymen could live on what he paid +them. + +But his son, succeeding to the business, determined, like Rehoboam of old, +to go ahead with the times. Fired with the great spirit of the nineteenth +century--at least with that one which is vulgarly considered its especial +glory--he resolved to make haste to be rich. His father had made money very +slowly of late; while dozens, who had begun business long after him, had +now retired to luxurious ease and suburban villas. Why should he remain in +the minority? Why should he not get rich as fast as he could? Why should he +stick to the old, slow-going, honourable trade? Out of some four hundred +and fifty West-end tailors, there were not one hundred left who were +old-fashioned and stupid enough to go on keeping down their own profits by +having all their work done at home and at first-hand. Ridiculous scruples! +The government knew none such. Were not the army clothes, the post-office +clothes, the policemen's clothes, furnished by contractors and sweaters, +who hired the work at low prices, and let it out again to journeymen +at still lower ones? Why should he pay his men two shillings where the +government paid them one? Were there not cheap houses even at the West-end, +which had saved several thousands a year merely by reducing their workmen's +wages? And if the workmen chose to take lower wages, he was not bound +actually to make them a present of more than they asked for? They would go +to the cheapest market for anything they wanted, and so must he. Besides, +wages had really been quite exorbitant. Half his men threw each of them as +much money away in gin and beer yearly, as would pay two workmen at cheap +house. Why was he to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their +extravagance? And charging his customers, too, unnecessarily high +prices--it was really robbing the public! + +Such, I suppose, were some of the arguments which led to an official +announcement, one Saturday night, that our young employer intended to +enlarge his establishment, for the purpose of commencing business in the +"show-trade"; and that, emulous of Messrs. Aaron, Levi, and the rest of +that class, magnificent alterations were to take place in the premises, to +make room for which our workrooms were to be demolished, and that for that +reason--for of course it was only for that reason--all work would in future +be given out, to be made up at the men's own homes. + +Our employer's arguments, if they were such as I suppose, were reasonable +enough according to the present code of commercial morality. But, strange +to say, the auditory, insensible to the delight with which the public would +view the splendid architectural improvements--with taste too grovelling +to appreciate the glories of plate-glass shop-fronts and brass scroll +work--too selfish to rejoice, for its own sake, in the beauty of arabesques +and chandeliers, which, though they never might behold, the astonished +public would--with souls too niggardly to leap for joy at the thought that +gents would henceforth buy the registered guanaco vest, and the patent +elastic omni-seasonum paletot half-a-crown cheaper than ever--or that +needy noblemen would pay three-pound-ten instead of five pounds for their +footmen's liveries--received the news, clod-hearted as they were, in sullen +silence, and actually, when they got into the street, broke out into +murmurs, perhaps into execrations. + +"Silence!" said Crossthwaite; "walls have ears. Come down to the nearest +house of call, and talk it out like men, instead of grumbling in the street +like fish-fags." + +So down we went. Crossthwaite, taking my arm, strode on in moody +silence--once muttering to himself, bitterly-- + +"Oh, yes; all right and natural! What can the little sharks do but follow +the big ones?" + +We took a room, and Crossthwaite coolly saw us all in; and locking the +door, stood with his back against it. + +"Now then, mind, 'One and all,' as the Cornishmen say, and no peaching. If +any man is scoundrel enough to carry tales, I'll--" + +"Do what?" asked Jemmy Downes, who had settled himself on the table, with a +pipe and a pot of porter. "You arn't the king of the Cannibal Islands, as I +know of, to cut a cove's head off?" + +"No; but if a poor man's prayer can bring God's curse down upon a traitor's +head--it may stay on his rascally shoulders till it rots." + +"If ifs and ans were pots and pans. Look at Shechem Isaacs, that sold +penknives in the street six months ago, now a-riding in his own carriage, +all along of turning sweater. If God's curse is like that--I'll be happy to +take any man's share of it." + +Some new idea seemed twinkling in the fellow's cunning bloated face as he +spoke. I, and others also, shuddered at his words; but we all forgot them a +moment afterwards, as Crossthwaite began to speak. + +"We were all bound to expect this. Every working tailor must come to this +at last, on the present system; and we are only lucky in having been spared +so long. You all know where this will end--in the same misery as fifteen +thousand out of twenty thousand of our class are enduring now. We shall +become the slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and +sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to +face, as the rest have, ever decreasing prices of labour, ever increasing +profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ +us--arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of hirelings--the competition +of women, and children, and starving Irish--our hours of work will increase +one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half; and in all this +we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more +penury, slavery, misery, as we are pressed on by those who are sucked by +fifties--almost by hundreds--yearly, out of the honourable trade in which +we were brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is +devouring our trade and many others, body and soul. Our wives will be +forced to sit up night and day to help us--our children must labour from +the cradle without chance of going to school, hardly of breathing the +fresh air of heaven,--our boys, as they grow up, must turn beggars or +paupers--our daughters, as thousands do, must eke out their miserable +earnings by prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what +one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there will be no +hope for us. There is no use appealing to government or parliament. I don't +want to talk politics here. I shall keep them for another place. But you +can recollect as well as I can, when a deputation of us went up to a +member of parliament--one that was reputed a philosopher, and a political +economist, and a liberal--and set before him the ever-increasing penury +and misery of our trade, and of those connected with it; you recollect his +answer--that, however glad he would be to help us, it was impossible--he +could not alter the laws of nature--that wages were regulated by the amount +of competition among the men themselves, and that it was no business of +government, or any one else, to interfere in contracts between the employer +and employed, that those things regulated themselves by the laws of +political economy, which it was madness and suicide to oppose. He may have +been a wise man. I only know that he was a rich one. Every one speaks well +of the bridge which carries him over. Every one fancies the laws which fill +his pockets to be God's laws. But I say this, If neither government nor +members of parliament can help us, we must help ourselves. Help yourselves, +and heaven will help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance. +One thing we can do--sit still." + +"And starve!" said some one. + +"Yes, and starve! Better starve than sin. I say, it is a sin to give in to +this system. It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are +now choking and strangling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the +black hole of Calcutta. Let those who will turn beasts of prey, and feed +upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves pure. It may be the +law of political civilization, the law of nature, that the rich should eat +up the poor, and the poor eat up each other. Then I here rise up and curse +that law, that civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them, +or they shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased burden on my +fellow-sufferers, I will not live. So help me God! I will take no work +home to my house; and I call upon every one here to combine, and to sign a +protest to that effect." + +"What's the use of that, my good Mr. Crossthwaite?" interrupted some one, +querulously. "Don't you know what came of the strike a few years ago, when +this piece-work and sweating first came in? The masters made fine promises, +and never kept 'em; and the men who stood out had their places filled up +with poor devils who were glad enough to take the work at any price--just +as ours will be. There's no use kicking against the pricks. All the rest +have come to it, and so must we. We must live somehow, and half a loaf is +better than no bread; and even that half loaf will go into other men's +mouths, if we don't snap at it at once. Besides, we can't force others to +strike. We may strike and starve ourselves, but what's the use of a dozen +striking out of 20,000?" + +"Will you sign the protest, gentlemen, or not?" asked Crossthwaite, in a +determined voice. + +Some half-dozen said they would if the others would. + +"And the others won't. Well, after all, one man must take the +responsibility, and I am that man. I will sign the protest by myself. I +will sweep a crossing--I will turn cress-gatherer, rag-picker; I will +starve piecemeal, and see my wife starve with me; but do the wrong thing I +will not! The Cause wants martyrs. If I must be one, I must." + +All this while my mind had been undergoing a strange perturbation. The +notion of escaping that infernal workroom, and the company I met there--of +taking my work home, and thereby, as I hoped, gaining more time for +study--at least, having my books on the spot ready at every odd moment, was +most enticing. I had hailed the proposed change as a blessing to me, till I +heard Crossthwaite's arguments--not that I had not known the facts before; +but it had never struck me till then that it was a real sin against my +class to make myself a party in the system by which they were allowing +themselves (under temptation enough, God knows) to be enslaved. But now +I looked with horror on the gulf of penury before me, into the vortex +of which not only I, but my whole trade, seemed irresistibly sucked. I +thought, with shame and remorse, of the few shillings which I had earned +at various times by taking piecework home, to buy my candles for study. +I whispered my doubts to Crossthwaite, as he sat, pale and determined, +watching the excited and querulous discussions among the other workmen. + +"What? So you expect to have time to read? Study after sixteen hours a +day stitching? Study, when you cannot earn money enough to keep you from +wasting and shrinking away day by day? Study, with your heart full of shame +and indignation, fresh from daily insult and injustice? Study, with the +black cloud of despair and penury in front of you? Little time, or heart, +or strength, will you have to study, when you are making the same coats you +make now, at half the price." + +I put my name down beneath Crossthwaite's, on the paper which he handed me, +and went out with him. + +"Ay," he muttered to himself, "be slaves--what you are worthy to be, that +you will be! You dare not combine--you dare not starve--you dare not +die--and therefore you dare not be free! Oh! for six hundred men like +Barbaroux's Marseillois--'who knew how to die!'" + +"Surely, Crossthwaite, if matters were properly represented to the +government, they would not, for their own existence' sake, to put +conscience out of the question, allow such a system to continue growing." + +"Government--government? You a tailor, and not know that government are the +very authors of this system? Not to know that they first set the example, +by getting the army and navy clothes made by contractors, and taking the +lowest tenders? Not to know that the police clothes, the postmen's clothes, +the convicts' clothes, are all contracted for on the same infernal plan, by +sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters, and sweaters' sweaters' sweaters, till +government work is just the very last, lowest resource to which a poor +starved-out wretch betakes himself to keep body and soul together? Why, +the government prices, in almost every department, are half, and less than +half, the very lowest living price. I tell you, the careless iniquity of +government about these things will come out some day. It will be known, the +whole abomination, and future generations will class it with the tyrannies +of the Roman emperors and the Norman barons. Why, it's a fact, that the +colonels of the regiments--noblemen, most of them--make their own vile +profit out of us tailors--out of the pauperism of the men, the slavery of +the children, the prostitution of the women. They get so much a uniform +allowed them by government to clothe the men with; and then--then, they +let out the jobs to the contractors at less than half what government +give them, and pocket the difference. And then you talk of appealing to +government." + +"Upon my word," I said, bitterly, "we tailors seem to owe the army a double +grudge. They not only keep under other artizans, but they help to starve us +first, and then shoot us, if we complain too loudly." + +"Oh, ho! your blood's getting up, is it? Then you're in the humour to be +told what you have been hankering to know so long--where Mackaye and I go +at night. We'll strike while the iron's hot, and go down to the Chartist +meeting at * * * * *. + +"Pardon me, my dear fellow," I said. "I cannot bear the thought of being +mixed up in conspiracy--perhaps, in revolt and bloodshed. Not that I am +afraid. Heaven knows I am not. But I am too much harassed, miserable, +already. I see too much wretchedness around me, to lend my aid in +increasing the sum of suffering, by a single atom, among rich and poor, +even by righteous vengeance." + +"Conspiracy? Bloodshed? What has that to do with the Charter? It suits the +venal Mammonite press well enough to jumble them together, and cry 'Murder, +rape, and robbery,' whenever the six points are mentioned; but they know, +and any man of common sense ought to know, that the Charter is just as much +an open political question as the Reform Bill, and ten times as much as +Magna Charter was, when it got passed. What have the six points, right or +wrong, to do with the question whether they can be obtained by moral +force, and the pressure of opinion alone, or require what we call ulterior +measures to get them carried? Come along!" + +So with him I went that night. + + * * * * * + +"Well, Alton! where was the treason and murder? Your nose must have been a +sharp one, to smell out any there. Did you hear anything that astonished +your weak mind so very exceedingly, after all?" + +"The only thing that did astonish me was to hear men of my own class--and +lower still, perhaps some of them--speak with such fluency and eloquence. +Such a fund of information--such excellent English--where did they get it +all?" + +"From the God who knows nothing about ranks. They're the unknown great--the +unaccredited heroes, as Master Thomas Carlyle would say--whom the flunkeys +aloft have not acknowledged yet--though they'll be forced to, some day, +with a vengeance. Are you convinced, once for all?" + +"I really do not understand political questions, Crossthwaite." + +"Does it want so very much wisdom to understand the rights and the wrongs +of all that? Are the people represented? Are you represented? Do you feel +like a man that's got any one to fight your battle in parliament, my young +friend, eh?" + +"I'm sure I don't know--" + +"Why, what in the name of common sense--what interest or feeling of yours +or mine, or any man's you ever spoke to, except the shopkeeper, do Alderman +A---- or Lord C---- D---- represent? They represent property--and we have +none. They represent rank--we have none. Vested interests--we have +none. Large capitals--those are just what crush us. Irresponsibility of +employers, slavery of the employed, competition among masters, competition +among workmen, that is the system they represent--they preach it, they +glory in it.--Why, it is the very ogre that is eating us all up. They are +chosen by the few, they represent the few, and they make laws for the +many--and yet you don't know whether or not the people are represented!" + +We were passing by the door of the Victoria Theatre; it was just half-price +time--and the beggary and rascality of London were pouring in to their low +amusement, from the neighbouring gin palaces and thieves' cellars. A herd +of ragged boys, vomiting forth slang, filth, and blasphemy, pushed past us, +compelling us to take good care of our pockets. + +"Look there! look at the amusements, the training, the civilization, which +the government permits to the children of the people! These licensed pits +of darkness, traps of temptation, profligacy, and ruin, triumphantly +yawning night after night--and then tell me that the people who see their +children thus kidnapped into hell are represented by a government who +licenses such things!" + +"Would a change in the franchise cure that?" + +"Household suffrage mightn't--but give us the Charter, and we'll see about +it! Give us the Charter, and we'll send workmen, into parliament that shall +soon find out whether something better can't be put in the way of the ten +thousand boys and girls in London who live by theft and prostitution, than +the tender mercies of the Victoria--a pretty name! They say the Queen's +a good woman--and I don't doubt it. I wonder often if she knows what her +precious namesake here is like." + +"But really, I cannot see how a mere change in representation can cure such +things as that." + +"Why, didn't they tell us, before the Reform Bill, that extension of the +suffrage was to cure everything? And how can you have too much of a good +thing? We've only taken them at their word, we Chartists. Haven't all +politicians been preaching for years that England's national greatness was +all owing to her political institutions--to Magna Charta, and the Bill of +Rights, and representative parliaments, and all that? It was but the +other day I got hold of some Tory paper, that talked about the English +constitution, and the balance of queen, lords, and commons, as the +'Talismanic Palladium' of the country. 'Gad, we'll see if a move onward in +the same line won't better the matter. If the balance of classes is such a +blessed thing, the sooner we get the balance equal, the better; for it's +rather lopsided just now, no one can deny. So, representative institutions +are the talismanic palladium of the nation, are they? The palladium of the +classes that have them, I dare say; and that's the very best reason why the +classes that haven't got 'em should look out for the same palladium for +themselves. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it? +We'll try--we'll see whether the talisman they talk of has lost its power +all of a sudden since '32--whether we can't rub the magic ring a little for +ourselves and call up genii to help us out of the mire, as the shopkeepers +and the gentlemen have done." + + * * * * * + +From that night I was a Chartist, heart and soul--and so were a million and +a half more of the best artisans in England--at least, I had no reason to +be ashamed of my company. Yes; I too, like Crossthwaite, took the upper +classes at their word; bowed down to the idol of political institutions, +and pinned my hopes of salvation on "the possession of one ten-thousandth +part of a talker in the national palaver." True, I desired the Charter, at +first (as I do, indeed, at this moment), as a means to glorious ends--not +only because it would give a chance of elevation, a free sphere of action, +to lowly worth and talent; but because it was the path to reforms--social, +legal, sanatory, educational--to which the veriest Tory--certainly not the +great and good Lord Ashley--would not object. But soon, with me, and I am +afraid with many, many more, the means became, by the frailty of poor human +nature, an end, an idol in itself. I had so made up my mind that it was +the only method of getting what I wanted, that I neglected, alas! but too +often, to try the methods which lay already by me. "If we had but the +Charter"--was the excuse for a thousand lazinesses, procrastinations. "If +we had but the Charter"--I should be good, and free, and happy. Fool that I +was! It was within, rather than without, that I needed reform. + +And so I began to look on man (and too many of us, I am afraid, are doing +so) as the creature and puppet of circumstances--of the particular outward +system, social or political, in which he happens to find himself. An +abominable heresy, no doubt; but, somehow, it appears to me just the same +as Benthamites, and economists, and high-churchmen, too, for that matter, +have been preaching for the last twenty years with great applause from +their respective parties. One set informs the world that it is to be +regenerated by cheap bread, free trade, and that peculiar form of the +"freedom of industry" which, in plain language, signifies "the despotism +of capital"; and which, whatever it means, is merely some outward system, +circumstance, or "dodge" _about_ man, and not _in_ him. Another party's +nostrum is more churches, more schools, more clergymen--excellent things in +their way--better even than cheap bread, or free trade, provided only that +they are excellent--that the churches, schools, clergymen, are good ones. +But the party of whom I am speaking seem to us workmen to consider the +quality quite a secondary consideration, compared with the quantity. They +expect the world to be regenerated, not by becoming more a Church--none +would gladlier help them in bringing that about than the Chartists +themselves, paradoxical as it may seem--but by being dosed somewhat more +with a certain "Church system," circumstance, or "dodge." For my part, I +seem to have learnt that the only thing to regenerate the world is not more +of any system, good or bad, but simply more of the Spirit of God. + +About the supposed omnipotence of the Charter, I have found out my mistake. +I believe no more in "Morison's-Pill-remedies," as Thomas Carlyle calls +them. Talismans are worthless. The age of spirit-compelling spells, whether +of parchment or carbuncle, is past--if, indeed, it ever existed. The +Charter will no more make men good, than political economy, or the +observance of the Church Calendar--a fact which we working men, I really +believe, have, under the pressure of wholesome defeat and God-sent +affliction, found out sooner than our more "enlightened" fellow-idolaters. +But at that time, as I have confessed already, we took our betters at their +word, and believed in Morison's Pills. Only, as we looked at the world from +among a class of facts somewhat different from theirs, we differed from +them proportionably as to our notions of the proper ingredients in the said +Pill. + + * * * * * + +But what became of our protest? + +It was received--and disregarded. As for turning us off, we had, _de +facto_, like Coriolanus, banished the Romans, turned our master off. All +the other hands, some forty in number, submitted and took the yoke upon +them, and went down into the house of bondage, knowing whither they went. +Every man of them is now a beggar, compared with what he was then. Many are +dead in the prime of life of consumption, bad food and lodging, and the +peculiar diseases of our trade. Some have not been heard of lately--we +fancy them imprisoned in some sweaters' dens--but thereby hangs a tale, +whereof more hereafter. + +But it was singular, that every one of the six who had merely professed +their conditional readiness to sign the protest, were contumeliously +discharged the next day, without any reason being assigned. It was evident +that there had been a traitor at the meeting; and every one suspected Jemmy +Downes, especially as he fell into the new system with suspiciously strange +alacrity. But it was as impossible to prove the offence against him, as to +punish him for it. Of that wretched man, too, and his subsequent career, I +shall have somewhat to say hereafter. Verily, there is a God who judgeth +the earth! + +But now behold me and my now intimate and beloved friend, Crossthwaite, +with nothing to do--a gentlemanlike occupation; but, unfortunately, in our +class, involving starvation. What was to be done? We applied for work at +several "honourable shops"; but at all we received the same answer. Their +trade was decreasing--the public ran daily more and more to the cheap +show-shops--and they themselves were forced, in order to compete with these +latter, to put more and more of their work out at contract prices. _Facilis +descensus Averni!_ Having once been hustled out of the serried crowd of +competing workmen, it was impossible to force our way in again. So, a +week or ten days past, our little stocks of money were exhausted. I was +down-hearted at once; but Crossthwaite bore up gaily enough. + +"Katie and I can pick a crust together without snarling over it. And, thank +God, I have no children, and never intend to have, if I can keep true to +myself, till the good times come." + +"Oh! Crossthwaite, are not children a blessing?" + +"Would they be a blessing to me now? No, my lad.--Let those bring slaves +into the world who will! I will never beget children to swell the numbers +of those who are trampling each other down in the struggle for daily +bread, to minister in ever deepening poverty and misery to the rich man's +luxury--perhaps his lust." + +"Then you believe in the Malthusian doctrines?" + +"I believe them to be an infernal lie, Alton Locke; though good and wise +people like Miss Martineau may sometimes be deluded into preaching them. I +believe there's room on English soil for twice the number there is now; and +when we get the Charter we'll prove it; we'll show that God meant living +human heads and hands to be blessings and not curses, tools and not +burdens. But in such times as these, let those who have wives be as though +they had none--as St. Paul said, when he told his people under the Roman +Emperor to be above begetting slaves and martyrs. A man of the people +should keep himself as free from encumbrances as he can just now. He win +find it all the more easy to dare and suffer for the people, when their +turn comes--" + +And he set his teeth, firmly, almost savagely. + +"I think I can earn a few shillings, now and then, by writing for a paper I +know of. If that won't do, I must take up agitating for a trade, and live +by spouting, as many a Tory member as well as Radical ones do. A man may do +worse, for he may do nothing. At all events, my only chance now is to +help on the Charter; for the sooner it comes the better for me. And if I +die--why, the little woman won't be long in coming after me, I know that +well; and there's a tough business got well over for both of us!" + +"Hech," said Sandy, + + "To every man + Death comes but once a life-- + +"as my countryman, Mr. Macaulay, says, in thae gran' Roman ballants o' his. +But for ye, Alton, laddie, ye're owre young to start off in the People's +Church Meelitant, sae just bide wi' me, and the barrel o' meal in the +corner there winna waste, nae mair than it did wi' the widow o' Zareptha; a +tale which coincides sae weel wi' the everlasting righteousness, that I'm +at times no inclined to consider it a'thegither mythical." + +But I, with thankfulness which vented itself through my eyes, finding my +lips alone too narrow for it, refused to eat the bread of idleness. + +"Aweel, then, ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles; I'm +getting auld and stiff, and ha' need o' help i' the business." + +"No," I said; "you say so out of kindness; but if you can afford no greater +comforts than these, you cannot afford to keep me in addition to yourself." + +"Hech, then! How do ye ken that the auld Scot eats a' he makes? I was na +born the spending side o' Tweed, my man. But gin ye daur, why dinna ye pack +up your duds, and yer poems wi' them, and gang till your cousin i' the +university? he'll surely put you in the way o' publishing them. He's bound +to it by blude; and there's na shame in asking him to help you towards +reaping the fruits o' yer ain labours. A few punds on a bond for repayment +when the addition was sauld, noo,--I'd do that for mysel; but I'm thinking +ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers. Dinna mind your independence; +it's but spoiling the Egyptians, ye ken, and the bit ballants will be their +money's worth, I'll warrant, and tell them a wheen facts they're no that +weel acquentit wi'. Hech? Johnnie, my Chartist?" + +"Why not go to my uncle?" + +"Puir sugar-and-spice-selling bailie body! is there aught in his ledger +about poetry, and the incommensurable value o' the products o' genius? Gang +till the young scholar; he's a canny one, too, and he'll ken it to be worth +his while to fash himsel a wee anent it." + +So I packed up my little bundle, and lay awake all that night in a fever +of expectation about the as yet unknown world of green fields and woods +through which my road to Cambridge lay. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +"THE YARD WHERE THE GENTLEMEN LIVE." + + +I may be forgiven, surely, if I run somewhat into detail about this my +first visit to the country. + +I had, as I have said before, literally never been further afield than +Fulham or Battersea Rise. One Sunday evening, indeed, I had got as far as +Wandsworth Common; but it was March, and, to my extreme disappointment, the +heath was not in flower. + +But, usually, my Sundays had been spent entirely in study; which to me was +rest, so worn out were both my body and my mind with the incessant drudgery +of my trade, and the slender fare to which I restricted myself. Since I had +lodged with Mackaye certainly my food had been better. I had not required +to stint my appetite for money wherewith to buy candles, ink, and pens. +My wages, too, had increased with my years, and altogether I found myself +gaining in strength, though I had no notion how much I possessed till I set +forth on this walk to Cambridge. + +It was a glorious morning at the end of May; and when. I escaped from +the pall of smoke which hung over the city, I found the sky a sheet of +cloudless blue. How I watched for the ending of the rows of houses, which +lined the road for miles--the great roots of London, running far out +into the country, up which poured past me an endless stream of food and +merchandise and human beings--the sap of the huge metropolitan life-tree! +How each turn of the road opened a fresh line of terraces or villas, till +hope deferred made the heart sick, and the country seemed--like the place +where the rainbow touches the ground, or the El Dorado of Raleigh's Guiana +settler--always a little farther off! How between gaps in the houses, right +and left, I caught tantalizing glimpses of green fields, shut from me by +dull lines of high-spiked palings! How I peeped through gates and over +fences at trim lawns and gardens, and longed to stay, and admire, and +speculate on the name of the strange plants and gaudy flowers; and then +hurried on, always expecting to find something still finer ahead--something +really worth stopping to look at--till the houses thickened again into a +street, and I found myself, to my disappointment, in the midst of a town! +And then more villas and palings; and then a village;--when would they +stop, those endless houses? + +At last they did stop. Gradually the people whom I passed began to look +more and more rural, and more toil-worn and ill-fed. The houses ended, +cattle-yards and farm-buildings appeared; and right and left, far away, +spread the low rolling sheet of green meadows and cornfields. Oh, the joy! +The lawns with their high elms and firs, the green hedgerows, the delicate +hue and scent of the fresh clover-fields, the steep clay banks where I +stopped to pick nosegays of wild flowers, and became again a child,--and +then recollected my mother, and a walk with her on the river bank towards +the Red House--and hurried on again, but could not be unhappy, while my +eyes ranged free, for the first time in my life, over the chequered squares +of cultivation, over glittering brooks, and hills quivering in the green +haze, while above hung the skylarks, pouring out their souls in melody. +And then, as the sun grew hot, and the larks dropped one by one into the +growing corn, the new delight of the blessed silence! I listened to the +stillness; for noise had been my native element; I had become in London +quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire +and dirt. And now, for the first time in my life, the crushing, confusing +hubbub had flowed away, and left my brain calm and free. How I felt at that +moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as new to me, +as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position. I cannot +help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement, physical as well +as moral, is to blame for very much of the working man's restlessness and +fierceness. As it was, I felt that every step forward, every breath of +fresh air, gave me new life. I had gone fifteen miles before I recollected +that, for the first time for many months, I had not coughed since I rose. + +So on I went, down the broad, bright road, which seemed to beckon me +forward into the unknown expanses of human life. + + The world was all before me, where to choose, + +and I saw it both with my eyes and my imagination, in the temper of a boy +broke loose from school. My heart kept holiday. I loved and blessed the +birds which flitted past me, and the cows which lay dreaming on the sward. +I recollect stopping with delight at a picturesque descent into the road, +to watch a nursery-garden, full of roses of every shade, from brilliant +yellow to darkest purple; and as I wondered at the innumerable variety of +beauties which man's art had developed from a few poor and wild species, it +seemed to me the most delightful life on earth, to follow in such a +place the primæval trade of gardener Adam; to study the secrets of the +flower-world, the laws of soil and climate; to create new species, and +gloat over the living fruit of one's own science and perseverance. And then +I recollected the tailor's shop, and the Charter, and the starvation, and +the oppression which I had left behind, and ashamed of my own selfishness, +went hurrying on again. + +At last I came to a wood--the first real wood that I had ever seen; not a +mere party of stately park trees growing out of smooth turf, but a real +wild copse; tangled branches and grey stems fallen across each other; deep, +ragged underwood of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' feathers, and gay +beds of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting about +them, and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough to bough--a poor, +commonplace bit of copse, I dare say, in the world's eyes, but to me a +fairy wilderness of beautiful forms, mysterious gleams and shadows, teeming +with manifold life. As I stood looking wistfully over the gate, alternately +at the inviting vista of the green-embroidered path, and then at the grim +notice over my head, "All trespassers prosecuted," a young man came up +the ride, dressed in velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, sufficiently +bedrabbled with mud. A fishing-rod and basket bespoke him some sort of +destroyer, and I saw in a moment that he was "a gentleman." After all, +there is such a thing as looking like a gentleman. There are men whose +class no dirt or rags could hide, any more than they could Ulysses. I +have seen such men in plenty among workmen, too; but, on the whole, the +gentlemen--by whom I do not mean just now the rich--have the superiority +in that point. But not, please God, for ever. Give us the same air, +water, exercise, education, good society, and you will see whether this +"haggardness," this "coarseness," &c., &c., for the list is too long to +specify, be an accident, or a property, of the man of the people. + +"May I go into your wood?" asked I at a venture, curiosity conquering +pride. + +"Well! what do you want there, my good fellow?" + +"To see what a wood is like--I never was in one in my life." + +"Humph! well--you may go in for that, and welcome. Never was in a wood in +his life--poor devil!" + +"Thank you!" quoth I. And I slowly clambered over the gate. He put his hand +carelessly on the top rail, vaulted over it like a deer, and then turned to +stare at me. + +"Hullo! I say--I forgot--don't go far in, or ramble up and down, or you'll +disturb the pheasants." + +I thanked him again for what license he had given me--went in, and lay down +by the path-side. + +Here, I suppose, by the rules of modern art, a picturesque description of +the said wood should follow; but I am the most incompetent person in the +world to write it. And, indeed, the whole scene was so novel to me, that I +had no time to analyse; I could only enjoy. I recollect lying on my face +and fingering over the delicately cut leaves of the weeds, and wondering +whether the people who lived in the country thought them as wonderful and +beautiful as I did;--and then I recollected the thousands whom I had left +behind, who, like me, had never seen the green face of God's earth; and the +answer of the poor gamin in St. Giles's, who, when he was asked what the +country was, answered, "_The yard where the gentlemen live when they go out +of town_"--significant that, and pathetic;--then I wondered whether the +time would ever come when society would be far enough advanced to open to +even such as he a glimpse, if it were only once a year, of the fresh, clean +face of God's earth;--and then I became aware of a soft mysterious hum, +above and around me, and turned on my back to look whence it proceeded, +and saw the leaves gold-green and transparent in the sunlight, quivering +against the deep heights of the empyrean blue; and hanging in the sunbeams +that pierced the foliage, a thousand insects, like specks of fire, that +poised themselves motionless on thrilling wings, and darted away, and +returned to hang motionless again;--and I wondered what they eat, and +whether they thought about anything, and whether they enjoyed the +sunlight;--and then that brought back to me the times when I used to lie +dreaming in my crib on summer mornings, and watched the flies dancing reels +between me and the ceilings;--and that again brought the thought of Susan +and my mother; and I prayed for them--not sadly--I could not be sad +there;--and prayed that we might all meet again some day and live happily +together; perhaps in the country, where I could write poems in peace; and +then, by degrees, my sentences and thoughts grew incoherent, and in happy, +stupid animal comfort, I faded away into a heavy sleep, which lasted an +hour or more, till I was awakened by the efforts of certain enterprising +great black and red ants, who were trying to found a small Algeria in my +left ear. + +I rose and left the wood, and a gate or two on, stopped again to look +at the same sportsman fishing in a clear silver brook. I could not help +admiring with a sort of childish wonder the graceful and practised aim with +which he directed his tiny bait, and called up mysterious dimples on the +surface, which in a moment increased to splashings and stragglings of a +great fish, compelled, as if by some invisible spell, to follow the point +of the bending rod till he lay panting on the bank. I confess, in spite of +all my class prejudices against "game-preserving aristocrats," I almost +envied the man; at least I seemed to understand a little of the universally +attractive charms which those same outwardly contemptible field sports +possess; the fresh air, fresh fields and copses, fresh running brooks, the +exercise, the simple freedom, the excitement just sufficient to keep alive +expectation and banish thought.--After all, his trout produced much the +same mood in him as my turnpike-road did in me. And perhaps the man did not +go fishing or shooting every day. The laws prevented him from shooting, at +least, all the year round; so sometimes there might be something in which +he made himself of use. An honest, jolly face too he had--not without +thought and strength in it. "Well, it is a strange world," said I to +myself, "where those who can, need not; and those who cannot, must!" + +Then he came close to the gate, and I left it just in time to see a little +group arrive at it--a woman of his own rank, young, pretty, and simply +dressed, with a little boy, decked out as a Highlander, on a shaggy +Shetland pony, which his mother, as I guessed her to be, was leading. And +then they all met, and the little fellow held up a basket of provisions +to his father, who kissed him across the gate, and hung his creel of fish +behind the saddle, and patted the mother's shoulder, as she looked up +lovingly and laughingly in his face. Altogether, a joyous, genial bit +of--Nature? Yes, Nature. Shall I grudge simple happiness to the few, +because it is as yet, alas! impossible for the many. + +And yet the whole scene contrasted so painfully with me--with my past, +my future, my dreams, my wrongs, that I could not look at it; and with a +swelling heart I moved on--all the faster because I saw they were looking +at me and talking of me, and the fair wife threw after me a wistful, +pitying glance, which I was afraid might develop itself into some offer of +food or money--a thing which I scorned and dreaded, because it involved the +trouble of a refusal. + +Then, as I walked on once more, my heart smote me. If they had wished to be +kind, why had I grudged them the opportunity of a good deed? At all events, +I might have asked their advice. In a natural and harmonious state, when +society really means brotherhood, a man could go up to any stranger, to +give and receive, if not succour, yet still experience and wisdom: and was +I not bound to tell them what I knew? was sure that they did not know? Was +I not bound to preach the cause of my class wherever I went? Here were +kindly people who, for aught I knew, would do right the moment they were +told where it was wanted; if there was an accursed artificial gulf between +their class and mine, had I any right to complain of it, as long as I +helped to keep it up by my false pride and surly reserve? No! I would speak +my mind henceforth--I would testify of what I saw and knew of the wrongs, +if not of the rights of the artisan, before whomsoever I might come. Oh! +valiant conclusion of half an hour's self-tormenting scruples! How I kept +it, remains to be shown. + +I really fear that I am getting somewhat trivial and prolix; but there was +hardly an incident in my two days' tramp which did not give me some small +fresh insight into the _terra incognita_ of the country; and there may be +those among my readers, to whom it is not uninteresting to look, for once, +at even the smallest objects with a cockney workman's eyes. + +Well, I trudged on--and the shadows lengthened, and I grew footsore and +tired; but every step was new, and won me forward with fresh excitement for +my curiosity. + +At one village I met a crowd of little, noisy, happy boys and girls pouring +out of a smart new Gothic school-house. I could not resist the temptation +of snatching a glance through the open door. I saw on the walls maps, +music, charts, and pictures. How I envied those little urchins! A solemn, +sturdy elder, in a white cravat, evidently the parson of the parish, was +patting children's heads, taking down names, and laying down the law to a +shrewd, prim young schoolmaster. + +Presently, as I went up the village, the clergyman strode past +me, brandishing a thick stick and humming a chant, and joined a +motherly-looking wife, who, basket on arm, was popping in and out of the +cottages, looking alternately serious and funny, cross and kindly--I +suppose, according to the sayings and doings of the folks within. + +"Come," I thought, "this looks like work at least." And as I went out +of the village, I accosted a labourer, who was trudging my way, fork on +shoulder, and asked him if that was the parson and his wife? + +I was surprised at the difficulty with which I got into conversation with +the man; at his stupidity, feigned or real, I could not tell which; at the +dogged, suspicious reserve with which he eyed me, and asked me whether I +was "one of they parts"? and whether I was a Londoner, and what I wanted on +the tramp, and so on, before he seemed to think it safe to answer a single +question. He seemed, like almost every labourer I ever met, to have +something on his mind; to live in a state of perpetual fear and +concealment. When, however, he found I was both a cockney and a passer-by, +he began to grow more communicative, and told me, "Ees--that were the +parson, sure enough." + +"And what sort of a man was he?" + +"Oh! he was a main kind man to the poor; leastwise, in the matter of +visiting 'em, and praying with 'em, and getting 'em to put into clubs, and +such like; and his lady too. Not that there was any fault to find with the +man about money--but 'twasn't to be expected of him." + +"Why, was he not rich?" + +"Oh, rich enough to the likes of us. But his own tithes here arn't more +than a thirty pounds we hears tell; and if he hadn't summat of his own, he +couldn't do not nothing by the poor; as it be, he pays for that ere school +all to his own pocket, next part. All the rest o' the tithes goes to some +great lord or other--they say he draws a matter of a thousand a year out of +the parish, and not a foot ever he sot into it; and that's the way with a +main lot o' parishes, up and down." + +This was quite a new fact to me. "And what sort of folks were the parsons +all round." + +"Oh, some of all sorts, good and bad. About six and half a dozen. There's +two or three nice young gentlemen come'd round here now, but they're all +what's-'em-a-call it?--some sort o' papishes;--leastwise, they has prayers +in the church every day, and doesn't preach the Gospel, no how, I hears +by my wife, and she knows all about it, along of going to meeting. Then +there's one over thereaway, as had to leave his living--he knows why. He +got safe over seas. If he had been a poor man, he'd been in * * * * * +gaol, safe enough, and soon enough. Then there's two or three as goes +a-hunting--not as I sees no harm in that; if a man's got plenty of money, +he ought to enjoy himself, in course: but still he can't be here and there +too, to once. Then there's two or three as is bad in their healths, or +thinks themselves so--or else has livings summer' else; and they lives +summer' or others, and has curates. Main busy chaps is they curates, +always, and wonderful hands to preach; but then, just as they gets a little +knowing like at it, and folks gets to like 'em, and run to hear 'em, off +they pops to summat better; and in course they're right to do so; and so +we country-folks get nought but the young colts, afore they're broke, you +see." + +"And what sort of a preacher was his parson?" + +"Oh, he preached very good Gospel, not that he went very often himself, +acause he couldn't make out the meaning of it; he preached too high, like. +But his wife said it was uncommon good Gospel; and surely when he come to +visit a body, and talked plain English, like, not sermon-ways, he was a +very pleasant man to heer, and his lady uncommon kind to nurse folk. They +sot up with me and my wife, they two did, two whole nights, when we was in +the fever, afore the officer could get us a nurse." + +"Well," said I, "there are some good parsons left." + +"Oh, yes; there's some very good ones--each one after his own way; and +there'd be more on 'em, if they did but know how bad we labourers was off. +Why bless ye, I mind when they was very different. A new parson is a mighty +change for the better, mostwise, we finds. Why, when I was a boy, we never +had no schooling. And now mine goes and learns singing and jobrafy, and +ciphering, and sich like. Not that I sees no good in it. We was a sight +better off in the old times, when there weren't no schooling. Schooling +harn't made wages rise, nor preaching neither." + +"But surely," I said, "all this religious knowledge ought to give you +comfort, even if you are badly off." + +"Oh! religion's all very well for them as has time for it; and a very good +thing--we ought all to mind our latter end. But I don't see how a man can +hear sermons with an empty belly; and there's so much to fret a man, now, +and he's so cruel tired coming home o' nights, he can't nowise go to pray a +lot, as gentlefolks does." + +"But are you so ill off?" + +"Oh! he'd had a good harvesting enough; but then he owed all that for he's +rent; and he's club money wasn't paid up, nor he's shop. And then, with +he's wages"--(I forget the sum--under ten shillings)--"how could a man +keep his mouth full, when he had five children! And then, folks is so +unmarciful--I'll just tell you what they says to me, now, last time I was +over at the board--" + +And thereon he rambled off into a long jumble of medical-officers, and +relieving-officers, and Farmer This, and Squire That, which indicated a +mind as ill-educated as discontented. He cursed or rather grumbled at--for +he had not spirit, it seemed, to curse anything--the New Poor Law; because +it "ate up the poor, flesh and bone";--bemoaned the "Old Law," when "the +Vestry was forced to give a man whatsomdever he axed for, and if they +didn't, he'd go to the magistrates and make 'em, and so sure as a man got a +fresh child, he went and got another loaf allowed him next vestry, like a +Christian;"--and so turned through a gate, and set to work forking up some +weeds on a fallow, leaving me many new thoughts to digest. + +That night, I got to some town or other, and there found a night's lodging, +good enough for a walking traveller. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +CAMBRIDGE. + + +When I started again next morning, I found myself so stiff and footsore, +that I could hardly put one leg before the other, much less walk upright. I +was really quite in despair, before the end of the first mile; for I had no +money to pay for a lift on the coach, and I knew, besides, that they would +not be passing that way for several hours to come. So, with aching back and +knees, I made shift to limp along, bent almost double, and ended by sitting +down for a couple of hours, and looking about me, in a country which would +have seemed dreary enough, I suppose, to any one but a freshly-liberated +captive, such as I was. At last I got up and limped on, stiffer than ever +from my rest, when a gig drove past me towards Cambridge, drawn by a stout +cob, and driven by a tall, fat, jolly-looking farmer, who stared at me as +he passed, went on, looked back, slackened his pace, looked back again, and +at last came to a dead stop, and hailed me in a broad nasal dialect-- + +"Whor be ganging, then, boh?" + +"To Cambridge." + +"Thew'st na git there that gate. Be'est thee honest man?" + +"I hope so," said I, somewhat indignantly. + +"What's trade?" + +"A tailor," I said. + +"Tailor!--guide us! Tailor a-tramp? Barn't accoostomed to tramp, then?" + +"I never was out of London before," said I, meekly--for I was too worn-out +to be cross--lengthy and impertinent as this cross-examination seemed. + +"Oi'll gie thee lift; dee yow joomp in. Gae on, powney! Tailor, then! Oh! +ah! tailor, saith he." + +I obeyed most thankfully, and sat crouched together, looking up out of +the corner of my eyes at the huge tower of broad-cloth by my side, and +comparing the two red shoulders of mutton which held the reins, with my own +wasted, white, woman-like fingers. + +I found the old gentleman most inquisitive. He drew out of me all my +story--questioned me about the way "Lunnon folks" lived, and whether they +got ony shooting or "pattening"--whereby I found he meant skating--and +broke in, every now and then, with ejaculations of childish wonder, and +clumsy sympathy, on my accounts of London labour and London misery. + +"Oh, father, father!--I wonders they bears it. Us'n in the fens wouldn't +stand that likes. They'd roit, and roit, and roit, and tak' oot the +dook-gunes to un--they would, as they did five-and-twenty year agone. Never +to goo ayond the housen!--never to go ayond the housen! Kill me in a three +months, that would--bor', then!" + +"Are you a farmer?" I asked, at last, thinking that my turn for questioning +was come. + +"I bean't varmer; I be yooman born. Never paid rent in moy life, nor never +wool. I farms my own land, and my vathers avore me, this ever so mony +hoondred year. I've got the swoord of 'em to home, and the helmet that they +fut with into the wars, then when they chopped off the king's head--what +was the name of um?" + +"Charles the First?" + +"Ees--that's the booy. We was Parliament side--true Britons all we was, +down into the fens, and Oliver Cromwell, as dug Botsham lode, to the head +of us. Yow coom down to Metholl, and I'll shaw ye a country. I'll shaw +'ee some'at like bullocks to call, and some'at like a field o' beans--I +wool,--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills" (though the country +through which we drove was flat enough, I should have thought, to please +any one), "to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so flat as a +barn's floor, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!--and +vour sons--or was vour on 'em--every one on 'em fifteen stone in his shoes, +to patten again' any man from Whit'sea Mere to Denver Sluice, for twenty +pounds o' gold; and there's the money to lay down, and let the man as +dare cover it, down with his money, and on wi' his pattens, thirteen-inch +runners, down the wind, again' either a one o' the bairns!" + +And he jingled in his pockets a heavy bag of gold, and winked, and +chuckled, and then suddenly checking himself, repeated in a sad, dubious +tone, two or three times, "Vour on 'em there was--vour on 'em there was;" +and relieved his feelings by springing the pony into a canter till he came +to a public-house, where he pulled up, called for a pot of hot ale, and +insisted on treating me. I assured him that I never drank fermented +liquors. + +"Aw? Eh? How can yow do that then? Die o' cowd i' the fen, that gate, yow +would. Love ye then! they as dinnot tak' spirits down thor, tak' their +pennord o' elevation, then--women-folk especial." + +"What's elevation?" + +"Oh! ho! ho!--yow goo into druggist's shop o' market-day, into Cambridge, +and you'll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a' ready on the +counter; and never a ven-man's wife goo by, but what calls in for her +pennord o' elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps +women-folk quiet, it do; and it's mortal good agin ago pains." + +"But what is it?" + +"Opium, bor' alive, opium!" + +"But doesn't it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of +drunkenness." + +"Ow, well, yow moi soy that-mak'th 'em cruel thin then, it do; but what can +bodies do i' th'ago? Bot it's a bad thing, it is. Harken yow to me. Didst +ever know one called Porter, to yowr trade?" + +I thought a little, and recollected a man of that name, who had worked with +us a year or two before--a great friend of a certain scatter-brained Irish +lad, brother of Crossthwaite's wife. + +"Well, I did once, but I have lost sight of him twelve months, or more." + +The old man faced sharp round on me, swinging the little gig almost over, +and then twisted himself back again, and put on a true farmer-like look of +dogged, stolid reserve. We rolled on a few minutes in silence. + +"Dee yow consider, now, that a mon mought be lost, like, into Lunnon?" + +"How lost?" + +"Why, yow told o' they sweaters--dee yow think a mon might get in wi' one +o' they, and they that mought be looking for un not to vind un?" + +"I do, indeed. There was a friend of that man Porter got turned away from +our shop, because he wouldn't pay some tyrannical fine for being saucy, as +they called it, to the shopman; and he went to a sweater's--and then to +another; and his friends have been tracking him up and down this six +months, and can hear no news of him." + +"Aw! guide us! And what'n, think yow, be gone wi' un?" + +"I am afraid he has got into one of those dens, and has pawned his clothes, +as dozens of them do, for food, and so can't get out." + +"Pawned his clothes for victuals! To think o' that, noo! But if he had +work, can't he get victuals?" + +"Oh!" I said, "there's many a man who, after working seventeen or eighteen +hours a day, Sundays and all, without even time to take off his clothes, +finds himself brought in in debt to his tyrant at the week's end. And if +he gets no work, the villain won't let him leave the house; he has to stay +there starving, on the chance of an hour's job. I tell you, I've known half +a dozen men imprisoned in that way, in a little dungeon of a garret, where +they had hardly room to stand upright, and only just space to sit and work +between their beds, without breathing the fresh air, or seeing God's sun, +for months together, with no victuals but a few slices of bread-and-butter, +and a little slop of tea, twice a day, till they were starved to the very +bone." + +"Oh, my God! my God!" said the old man, in a voice which had a deeper +tone of feeling than mere sympathy with others' sorrow was likely to have +produced. There was evidently something behind all these inquiries of his. +I longed to ask him if his name, too, was not Porter. + +"Aw yow knawn Billy Porter? What was a like? Tell me, now--what was a like, +in the Lord's name! what was a like unto?" + +"Very tall and bony," I answered. + +"Ah! sax feet, and more? and a yard across?--but a was starved, a was a' +thin, though, maybe, when yow sawn un?--and beautiful fine hair, hadn't a, +like a lass's?" + +"The man I knew had red hair," quoth I. + +"Ow, ay, an' that it wor, red as a rising sun, and the curls of un like +gowlden guineas! And thou knew'st Billy Porter! To think o' that, noo."-- + +Another long silence. + +"Could you find un, dee yow think, noo, into Lunnon? Suppose, now, +there was a mon 'ud gie--may be five pund--ten pund--twenty pund, by +* * *--twenty pund down, for to ha' him brocht home safe and soun'--Could +yow do't, bor'? I zay, could yow do't?" + +"I could do it as well without the money as with, if I could do it at all. +But have you no guess as to where he is?" + +He shook his head sadly. + +"We--that's to zay, they as wants un--hav'n't heerd tell of un vor this +three year--three year coom Whitsuntide as ever was--" And he wiped his +eyes with his cuff. + +"If you will tell me all about him, and where he was last heard of, I will +do all I can to find him." + +"Will ye, noo? will ye? The Lord bless ye for zaying that." And he grasped +my hand in his great iron fist, and fairly burst out crying. + +"Was he a relation of yours?" I asked, gently. + +"My bairn--my bairn--my eldest bairn. Dinnot yow ax me no moor--dinnot +then, bor'. Gie on, yow powney, and yow goo leuk vor un." + +Another long silence. + +"I've a been to Lunnon, looking vor un." + +Another silence. + +"I went up and down, up and down, day and night, day and night, to all +pot-houses as I could zee; vor, says I, he was a'ways a main chap to drink, +he was. Oh, deery me! and I never cot zight on un--and noo I be most spent, +I be."-- + +And he pulled up at another public-house, and tried this time a glass of +brandy. He stopped, I really think, at every inn between that place and +Cambridge, and at each tried some fresh compound; but his head seemed, from +habit, utterly fire-proof. + +At last, we neared Cambridge, and began to pass groups of gay horsemen, and +then those strange caps and gowns--ugly and unmeaning remnant of obsolete +fashion. + +The old man insisted on driving me up to the gate of * * * College, and +there dropped me, after I had given him my address, entreating me to "vind +the bairn, and coom to zee him down to Metholl. But dinnot goo ax for +Farmer Porter--they's all Porters there away. Yow ax for Wooden-house +Bob--that's me; and if I barn't to home, ax for Mucky Billy--that's my +brawther--we're all gotten our names down to ven; and if he barn't to home, +yow ax for Frog-hall--that's where my sister do live; and they'll all veed +ye, and lodge ye, and welcome come. We be all like one, doon in the ven; +and do ye, do ye, vind my bairn!" And he trundled on, down the narrow +street. + +I was soon directed, by various smart-looking servants, to my cousin's +rooms; and after a few mistakes, and wandering up and down noble courts and +cloisters, swarming with gay young men, whose jaunty air and dress seemed +strangely out of keeping with the stem antique solemnity of the Gothic +buildings around, I espied my cousin's name over a door; and, uncertain how +he might receive me, I gave a gentle, half-apologetic knock, which, +was answered by a loud "Come in!" and I entered on a scene, even more +incongruous than anything I had seen outside. + +"If we can only keep away from Jesus as far as the corner, I don't care." + +"If we don't run into that first Trinity before the willows, I shall care +with a vengeance." + +"If we don't it's a pity," said my cousin. "Wadham ran up by the side of +that first Trinity yesterday, and he said that they were as well gruelled +as so many posters, before they got to the stile." + +This unintelligible, and to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation, +proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned +sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in +shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; +while my cousin, dressed like "a fancy waterman," sat on the back of a +sofa, puffing away at a huge meerschaum. + +"Alton! why, what wind on earth has blown you here?" + +By the tone, the words seemed rather an inquiry as to what wind would be +kind enough to blow me back again. But he recovered his self-possession in +a moment. + +"Delighted to see you! Where's your portmanteau? Oh--left it at the Bull! +Ah! I see. Very well, we'll send the gyp for it in a minute, and order some +luncheon. We're just going down to the boat-race. Sorry I can't stop, but +we shall all be fined--not a moment to lose. I'll send you in luncheon as +I go through the butteries; then, perhaps, you'd like to come down and see +the race. Ask the gyp to tell you the way. Now, then, follow your noble +captain, gentlemen--to glory and a supper." And he bustled out with his +crew. + +While I was staring about the room, at the jumble of Greek books, +boxing-gloves, and luscious prints of pretty women, a shrewd-faced, smart +man entered, much better dressed than myself. + +"What would you like, sir? Ox-tail soup, sir, or gravy-soup, sir? Stilton +cheese, sir, or Cheshire, sir? Old Stilton, sir, just now." + +Fearing lest many words might betray my rank--and, strange to say, though +I should not have been afraid of confessing myself an artisan before the +"gentlemen" who had just left the room, I was ashamed to have my low estate +discovered, and talked over with his compeers, by the flunkey who waited on +them--I answered, "Anything--I really don't care," in as aristocratic and +off-hand a tone as I could assume. + +"Porter or ale, sir?" + +"Water," without a "thank you," I am ashamed to say for I was not at that +time quite sure whether it was well-bred to be civil to servants. + +The man vanished, and reappeared with a savoury luncheon, silver forks, +snowy napkins, smart plates--I felt really quite a gentleman. + +He gave me full directions as to my "way to the boats, sir;" and I started +out much refreshed; passed through back streets, dingy, dirty, and +profligate-looking enough; out upon wide meadows, fringed with enormous +elms; across a ferry; through a pleasant village, with its old grey church +and spire; by the side of a sluggish river, alive with wherries. I had +walked down some mile or so, and just as I heard a cannon, as I thought, +fire at some distance, and wondered at its meaning, I came to a sudden bend +of the river, with a church-tower hanging over the stream on the opposite +bank, a knot of tall poplars, weeping willows, rich lawns, sloping down to +the water's side, gay with bonnets and shawls; while, along the edge of +the stream, light, gaudily-painted boats apparently waited for the +race,--altogether the most brilliant and graceful group of scenery which I +had beheld in my little travels. I stopped to gaze; and among the ladies on +the lawn opposite, caught sight of a figure--my heart leapt into my mouth! +Was it she at last? It was too far to distinguish features; the dress was +altogether different--but was it not she? I saw her move across the lawn, +and take the arm of a tall, venerable-looking man; and his dress was the +same as that of the Dean, at the Dulwich Gallery--was it? was it not? +To have found her, and a river between us! It was ludicrously +miserable--miserably ludicrous. Oh, that accursed river, which debarred me +from certainty, from bliss! I would have plunged across--but there were +three objections--first, that I could not swim; next, what could I do when +I had crossed? and thirdly, it might not be she after all. + +And yet I was certain--instinctively certain--that it was she, the idol of +my imagination for years. If I could not see her features under that little +white bonnet, I could imagine them there; they flashed up in my memory as +fresh as ever. Did she remember my features, as I did hers? Would she know +me again? Had she ever even thought of me, from that day to this? Fool! +But there I stood, fascinated, gazing across the river, heedless of the +racing-boats, and the crowd, and the roar that was rushing up to me at the +rate of ten miles an hour, and in a moment more, had caught me, and swept +me away with it, whether I would or not, along the towing-path, by the side +of the foremost boats. + +And yet, after a few moments, I ceased to wonder either at the Cambridge +passion for boat-racing, or at the excitement of the spectators. "_Honi +soit qui mal y pense_." It was a noble sport--a sight such as could only be +seen in England--some hundred of young men, who might, if they had chosen, +been lounging effeminately about the streets, subjecting themselves +voluntarily to that intense exertion, for the mere pleasure of toil. +The true English stuff came out there; I felt that, in spite of all +my prejudices--the stuff which has held Gibraltar and conquered at +Waterloo--which has created a Birmingham and a Manchester, and colonized +every quarter of the globe--that grim, earnest, stubborn energy, which, +since the days of the old Romans, the English possess alone of all the +nations of the earth. I was as proud of the gallant young fellows as if +they had been my brothers--of their courage and endurance (for one could +see that it was no child's-play, from the pale faces, and panting lips), +their strength and activity, so fierce and yet so cultivated, smooth, +harmonious, as oar kept time with oar, and every back rose and fell in +concert--and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely +by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse +of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the long snake-like eight +oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake, the grim, breathless +silence of the straining rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears +swelled into my eyes; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman; and when I +caught sight of my cousin, pulling stroke to the second boat in the long +line, with set teeth and flashing eyes, the great muscles on his bare arms +springing up into knots at every rapid stroke, I ran and shouted among the +maddest and the foremost. + +But I soon tired, and, footsore as I was, began to find my strength fail +me. I tried to drop behind, but found it impossible in the press. At last, +quite out of breath, I stopped; and instantly received a heavy blow from +behind, which threw me on my face; and a fierce voice shouted in my ear, +"Confound you, sir! don't you know better than to do that?" I looked up, +and saw a man twice as big as myself sprawling over me, headlong down the +bank, toward the river, whither I followed him, but alas! not on my feet, +but rolling head over heels. On the very brink he stuck his heels into the +turf, and stopped dead, amid a shout of, "Well saved, Lynedale!" I did not +stop; but rolled into some two-feet water, amid the laughter and shouts of +the men. + +I scrambled out, and limped on, shaking with wet and pain, till I was +stopped by a crowd which filled the towing-path. An eight-oar lay under the +bank, and the men on shore were cheering and praising those in the boat for +having "bumped," which word I already understood to mean, winning a race. + +Among them, close to me, was the tall man who had upset me; and a very +handsome, high-bred looking man he was. I tried to slip by, but he +recognized me instantly, and spoke. + +"I hope I didn't hurt you much, Really, when I spoke so sharply, I did not +see that you were not a gownsman!" + +The speech, as I suppose now, was meant courteously enough. It indicated +that though he might allow himself liberties with men of his own class, he +was too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the +words, "not a gownsman." Why should he see that I was not a gownsman? +Because I was shabbier?--(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they +had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may +mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had +not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish, +of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled, +nevertheless, at not being mistaken for one; and answered, sharply enough-- + +"No matter whether I am hurt or not. It serves me right for getting among +you cursed aristocrats." + +"Box the cad's ears, Lord Lynedale," said a dirty fellow with a long +pole--a cad himself, I should have thought. + +"Let him go home and ask his mammy to hang him out to dry," said another. + +The lord (for so I understood he was) looked at me with an air of surprise +and amusement, which may have been good-natured enough in him, but did not +increase the good-nature in me. + +"Tut, tut, my good fellow. I really am very sorry for having upset you. +Here's half-a-crown to cover damages." + +"Better give it me than a muff like that," quoth he of the long pole; while +I answered, surlily enough, that I wanted neither him nor his money, and +burst through the crowd toward Cambridge. I was so shabby and plebeian, +then, that people actually dare offer me money! Intolerable! + +The reader may say that I was in a very unwholesome and unreasonable frame +of mind. + +So I was. And so would he have been in my place. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +THE LOST IDOL FOUND. + + +On my return, I found my cousin already at home, in high spirits at having, +as he informed me, "bumped the first Trinity." I excused myself for my +dripping state, simply by saying that I had slipped into the river. To tell +him the whole of the story, while the fancied insult still rankled fresh in +me, was really too disagreeable both to my memory and my pride. + +Then came the question, "What had brought me to Cambridge?" I told him all, +and he seemed honestly to sympathize with my misfortunes. + +"Never mind; we'll make it all right somehow. Those poems of yours--you +must let me have them and look over them; and I dare say I shall persuade +the governor to do something with them. After all, it's no loss for you; +you couldn't have got on tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for that;--you +ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. These sizarships, +now, were meant for--just such cases as yours--clever fellows who could not +afford to educate themselves; if we could only help you to one of them, +now-- + +"You forget that in that case," said I, with something like a sigh, "I +should have to become a member of the Church of England." + +"Why, no; not exactly. Though, of course, if you want to get all out of the +university which you ought to get, you must do so at last." + +"And pretend to believe what I do not; for the sake of deserting my own +class, and pandering to the very aristocrats, whom--" + +"Hullo!" and he jumped with a hoarse laugh. "Stop that till I see whether +the door is sported. Why, you silly fellow, what harm have the aristocrats, +as you call them, ever done you? Are they not doing you good at this +moment? Are you not, by virtue of their aristocratic institutions, nearer +having your poems published, your genius recognized, etc. etc., than ever +you were before?" + +"Aristocrats? Then you call yourself one?" + +"No, Alton, my boy; not yet," said he quietly and knowingly. "Not yet: but +I have chosen the right road, and shall end at the road's end; and I advise +you--for really, as my cousin, I wish you all success, even for the mere +credit of the family, to choose the same road likewise." + +"What road?" + +"Come up to Cambridge, by hook or by crook, and then take orders." + +I laughed scornfully. + +"My good cousin, it is the only method yet discovered for turning a snob +(as I am, or was) into a gentleman; except putting him into a heavy cavalry +regiment. My brother, who has no brains, preferred the latter method. I, +who flatter myself that I have some, have taken the former." The thought +was new and astonishing to me, and I looked at him in silence while he ran +on-- + +"If you are once a parson, all is safe. Be you who you may before, from +that moment you are a gentleman. No one will offer an insult. You are good +enough for any man's society. You can dine at any nobleman's table. You can +be friend, confidant, father confessor, if you like, to the highest women +in the land; and if you have person, manners, and common sense, marry one +of them into the bargain, Alton, my boy." + +"And it is for that that you will sell your soul--to become a hanger-on of +the upper classes, in sloth and luxury?" + +"Sloth and luxury? Stuff and nonsense! I tell you that after I have taken +orders, I shall have years and years of hard work before me; continual +drudgery of serving tables, managing charities, visiting, preaching, from +morning till night, and after that often from night to morning again. +Enough to wear out any but a tough constitution, as I trust mine is. Work, +Alton, and hard work, is the only way now-a-days to rise in the Church, as +in other professions. My father can buy me a living some day: but he +can't buy me success, notoriety, social position, power--" and he stopped +suddenly, as if he had been on the point of saying something more which +should not have been said. + +"And this," I said, "is your idea of a vocation for the sacred ministry? It +is for this, that you, brought up a dissenter, have gone over to the Church +of England?" + +"And how do you know"--and his whole tone of voice changed instantly +into what was meant, I suppose, for a gentle seriousness and reverent +suavity--"that I am not a sincere member of the Church of England? How do +you know that I may not have loftier plans and ideas, though I may not +choose to parade them to everyone, and give that which is holy to the +dogs?" + +"I am the dog, then?" I asked, half amused, for I was too curious about his +state of mind to be angry. + +"Not at all, my dear fellow. But those great men to whom we (or at least I) +owe our conversion to the true Church, always tell us (and you will feel +yourself how right they are) not to parade religious feelings; to look upon +them as sacred things, to be treated with that due reserve which springs +from real reverence. You know, as well as I, whether that is the fashion +of the body in which we were, alas! brought up. You know, as well as I, +whether the religious conversation of that body has heightened your respect +for sacred things." + +"I do, too well." And I thought of Mr. Wigginton and my mother's tea +parties. + +"I dare say the vulgarity of that school has, ere now, shaken your faith in +all that was holy?" + +I was very near confessing that it had: but a feeling came over me, I knew +not why, that my cousin would have been glad to get me into his power, and +would therefore have welcomed a confession of infidelity. So I held my +tongue. + +"I can confess," he said, in the most confidential tone, "that it had for a +time that effect on me. I have confessed it, ere now, and shall again and +again, I trust. But I shudder to think of what I might have been believing +or disbelieving now, if I had not in a happy hour fallen in with Mr. +Newman's sermons, and learnt from them, and from his disciples, what the +Church of England really was; not Protestant, no; but Catholic in the +deepest and highest sense." + +"So you are one of these new Tractarians? You do not seem to have adopted +yet the ascetic mode of life, which I hear they praise up so highly," + +"My dear Alton, if you have read, as you have, your Bible, you will +recollect a text which tells you not to appear to men to fast. What I do +or do not do in the way of self-denial, unless I were actually profligate, +which I give you my sacred honour I am not, must be a matter between Heaven +and myself." + +There was no denying that truth; but the longer my cousin talked the less I +trusted in him--I had almost said, the less I believed him. Ever since the +tone of his voice had changed so suddenly, I liked him less than when he +was honestly blurting out his coarse and selfish ambition. I do not think +he was a hypocrite. I think he believed what he said, as strongly as he +could believe anything. He proved afterwards that he did so, as far as +man can judge man, by severe and diligent parish work: but I cannot help +doubting at times, if that man ever knew what believing meant. God forgive +him! In that, he is no worse than hundreds more who have never felt the +burning and shining flame of intense conviction, of some truth rooted in +the inmost recesses of the soul, by which a man must live, for which he +would not fear to die. + +And therefore I listened to him dully and carelessly; I did not care to +bring objections, which arose thick and fast, to everything he said. He +tried to assure me--and did so with a great deal of cleverness--that this +Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic, but a democratic one; +that the Catholic Church had been in all ages the Church of the poor; that +the clergy were commissioned by Heaven to vindicate the rights of the +people, and to stand between them and the tyranny of Mammon. I did not +care to answer him that the "Catholic Church" had always been a Church of +slaves, and not of free men; that the clergy had in every age been the +enemies of light, of liberty; the oppressors of their flocks; and that to +exalt a sacerdotal caste over other aristocracies, whether of birth or +wealth, was merely to change our tyrants. When he told me that a clergyman +of the Established Church, if he took up the cause of the working classes, +might be the boldest and surest of all allies, just because, being +established, and certain of his income, he cared not one sixpence what he +said to any man alive, I did not care to answer him, as I might--And more +shame upon the clergy that, having the safe vantage-ground which you +describe, they dare not use it like men in a good cause, and speak their +minds, if forsooth no one can stop them from so doing. In fact, I was +distrustful, which I had a right to be, and envious also; but if I had a +right to be that, I was certainly not wise, nor is any man, in exercising +the said dangerous right as I did, and envying my cousin and every man in +Cambridge. + +But that evening, understanding that a boating supper, or some jubilation +over my cousin's victory, was to take place in his rooms, I asked leave to +absent myself--and I do not think my cousin felt much regret at giving me +leave--and wandered up and down the King's Parade, watching the tall gables +of King's College Chapel, and the classic front of the Senate House, and +the stately tower of St. Mary's, as they stood, stern and silent, bathed in +the still glory of the moonlight, and contrasting bitterly the lot of those +who were educated under their shadow to the lot which had befallen me. +[Footnote: It must be remembered that these impressions of, and comments on +the universities, are not my own. They are simply what clever working men +thought about them from 1845 to 1850; a period at which I had the fullest +opportunities for knowing the thoughts of working men.] + +"Noble buildings!" I said to myself, "and noble institutions! given freely +to the people, by those who loved the people, and the Saviour who died +for them. They gave us what they had, those mediæval founders: whatsoever +narrowness of mind or superstition defiled their gift was not their fault, +but the fault of their whole age. The best they knew they imparted freely, +and God will reward them for it. To monopolize those institutions for the +rich, as is done now, is to violate both the spirit and the letter of +the foundations; to restrict their studies to the limits of middle-aged +Romanism, their conditions of admission to those fixed at the Reformation, +is but a shade less wrongful. The letter is kept--the spirit is thrown +away. You refuse to admit any who are not members of the Church of England, +say, rather, any who will not sign the dogmas of the Church of England, +whether they believe a word of them or not. Useless formalism! which lets +through the reckless, the profligate, the ignorant, the hypocritical: +and only excludes the honest and the conscientious, and the mass of the +intellectual working men. And whose fault is it that THEY are not members +of the Church of England? Whose fault is it, I ask? Your predecessors +neglected the lower orders, till they have ceased to reverence either you +or your doctrines, you confess that, among yourselves, freely enough. You +throw the blame of the present wide-spread dislike to the Church of England +on her sins during 'the godless eighteenth century.' Be it so. Why are +those sins to be visited on us? Why are we to be shut out from the +universities, which were founded for us, because you have let us grow +up, by millions, heathens and infidels, as you call us? Take away your +subterfuge! It is not merely because we are bad churchmen that you exclude +us, else you would be crowding your colleges, now, with the talented poor +of the agricultural districts, who, as you say, remain faithful to the +church of their fathers. But are there six labourers' sons educating in +the universities at this moment! No! the real reason for our exclusion, +churchmen or not, is, because we are _poor_--because we cannot pay your +exorbitant fees, often, as in the case of bachelors of arts, exacted for +tuition which is never given, and residence which is not permitted--because +we could not support the extravagance which you not only permit, but +encourage--because by your own unblushing confession, it insures the +university 'the support of the aristocracy.'" + +"But, on religious points, at least, you must abide by the statutes of the +university." + +Strange argument, truly, to be urged literally by English Protestants in +possession of Roman Catholic bequests! If that be true in the letter, +as well as in the spirit, you should have given place long ago to the +Dominicans and the Franciscans. In the spirit it is true, and the Reformers +acted on it when they rightly converted the universities to the uses of the +new faith. They carried out the spirit of the founders' statutes by making +the universities as good as they could be, and letting them share in the +new light of the Elizabethan age. But was the sum of knowledge, human and +divine, perfected at the Reformation? Who gave the Reformers, or you, who +call yourselves their representatives, a right to say to the mind of man, +and to the teaching of God's Spirit, "Hitherto, and no farther"? Society +and mankind, the children of the Supreme, will not stop growing for your +dogmas--much less for your vested interests; and the righteous law of +mingled development and renovation, applied in the sixteenth century, must +be reapplied in the nineteenth; while the spirits of the founders, now +purged from the superstitions and ignorances of their age, shall smile from +heaven, and say, "So would we have had it, if we had lived in the great +nineteenth century, into which it has been your privilege to be born." + +But such thoughts soon passed away. The image which I had seen that +afternoon upon the river banks had awakened imperiously the frantic +longings of past years; and now it reascended its ancient throne, and +tyrannously drove forth every other object, to keep me alone with its own +tantalizing and torturing beauty. I did not think about her--No; I only +stupidly and steadfastly stared at her with my whole soul and imagination, +through that long sleepless night; and, in spite of the fatigue of my +journey, and the stiffness proceeding from my fall and wetting, I lay +tossing till the early sun poured into my bedroom window. Then I arose, +dressed myself, and went out to wander up and down the streets, gazing +at one splendid building after another, till I found the gates of King's +College open. I entered eagerly, through a porch which, to my untutored +taste, seemed gorgeous enough to form the entrance to a fairy palace, and +stood in the quadrangle, riveted to the spot by the magnificence of the +huge chapel on the right. + +If I had admired it the night before, I felt inclined to worship it this +morning, as I saw the lofty buttresses and spires, fretted with all their +gorgeous carving, and "storied windows richly dight," sleeping in the glare +of the newly-risen sun, and throwing their long shadows due westward down +the sloping lawn, and across the river which dimpled and gleamed below, +till it was lost among the towering masses of crisp elms and rose-garlanded +chestnuts in the rich gardens beyond. + +Was I delighted? Yes--and yet no. There is a painful feeling in seeing +anything magnificent which one cannot understand. And perhaps it was a +morbid sensitiveness, but the feeling was strong upon me that I was an +interloper there--out of harmony with the scene and the system which had +created it; that I might be an object of unpleasant curiosity, perhaps of +scorn (for I had not forgotten the nobleman at the boat-race), amid those +monuments of learned luxury. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was only from +the instinct which makes us seek for solitude under the pressure of intense +emotions, when we have neither language to express them to ourselves, nor +loved one in whose silent eyes we may read kindred feelings--a sympathy +which wants no words. Whatever the cause was, when a party of men, in their +caps and gowns, approached me down the dark avenue which led into the +country, I was glad to shrink for concealment behind the weeping-willow +at the foot of the bridge, and slink off unobserved to breakfast with my +cousin. + +We had just finished breakfast, my cousin was lighting his meerschaum, when +a tall figure passed the window, and the taller of the noblemen, whom I +had seen at the boat-race, entered the room with a packet of papers in his +hand. + +"Here, Locule mi! my pocket-book--or rather, to stretch a bad pun till +it bursts, my pocket-dictionary--I require the aid of your +benevolently-squandered talents for the correction of these proofs. I am, +as usual, both idle and busy this morning; so draw pen, and set to work for +me." + +"I am exceedingly sorry, my lord," answered George, in his most obsequious +tone, "but I must work this morning with all my might. Last night, +recollect, was given to triumph, Bacchus, and idleness." + +"Then find some one who will do them for me, my Ulysses polumechane, +polutrope, panurge." + +"I shall be most happy (with a half-frown and a wince) to play Panurge to +your lordship's Pantagruel, on board the new yacht." + +"Oh, I am perfect in that character, I suppose? And is she after all, like +Pantagruel's ship, to be loaded with hemp? Well, we must try two or three +milder cargoes first. But come, find me some starving genius--some græculus +esuriens--" + +"Who will ascend to the heaven of your lordship's eloquence for the +bidding?" + +"Five shillings a sheet--there will be about two of them, I think, in the +pamphlet." + +"May I take the liberty of recommending my cousin here?" + +"Your cousin?" And he turned to me, who had been examining with a sad and +envious eye the contents of the bookshelves. Our eyes met, and first a +faint blush, and then a smile of recognition, passed over his magnificent +countenance. + +"I think I had--I am ashamed that I cannot say the pleasure, of meeting him +at the boat race yesterday." + +My cousin looked inquiringly and vexed at us both. The nobleman smiled. + +"Oh, the fault was mine, not his." + +"I cannot think," I answered, "that you have any reasons to remember with +shame your own kindness and courtesy. As for me," I went on bitterly, "I +suppose a poor journeyman tailor, who ventures to look on at the sports of +gentlemen, only deserves to be run over." + +"Sir," he said, looking at me with a severe and searching glance, "your +bitterness is pardonable--but not your sneer. You do not yourself think +what you say, and you ought to know that I think it still less than +yourself. If you intend your irony to be useful, you should keep it till +you can use it courageously against the true offenders." + +I looked up at him fiercely enough, but the placid smile which had returned +to his face disarmed me. + +"Your class," he went on, "blind yourselves and our class as much by +wholesale denunciations of us, as we, alas! who should know better, do by +wholesale denunciations of you. As you grow older, you will learn that +there are exceptions to every rule." + +"And yet the exception proves the rule." + +"Most painfully true, sir. But that argument is two-edged. For instance, +am I to consider it the exception or the rule, when I am told that you, a +journeyman tailor, are able to correct these proofs for me?" + +"Nearer the rule, I think, than you yet fancy." + +"You speak out boldly and well; but how can you judge what I may please to +fancy? At all events, I will make trial of you. There are the proofs. Bring +them to me by four o'clock this afternoon, and if they are well done, I +will pay you more than I should do to the average hack-writer, for you will +deserve more." + +I took the proofs; he turned to go, and by a side-look at George beckoned +him out of the room. I heard a whispering in the passage; and I do not deny +that my heart beat high with new hopes, as I caught unwillingly the words-- + +"Such a forehead!--such an eye!--such a contour of feature as that!--Locule +mi--that boy ought not to be mending trousers." + +My cousin returned, half laughing, half angry. + +"Alton, you fool, why did you let out that you were a snip?" + +"I am not ashamed of my trade." + +"I am, then. However, you've done with it now; and if you can't come the +gentleman, you may as well come the rising genius. The self-educated dodge +pays well just now; and after all, you've hooked his lordship--thank me for +that. But you'll never hold him, you impudent dog, if you pull so hard +on him"--He went on, putting his hands into his coat-tail pockets, and +sticking himself in front of the fire, like the Delphic Pythoness upon the +sacred tripod, in hopes, I suppose, of some oracular afflatus--"You will +never hold him, I say, if you pull so hard on him. You ought to 'My lord' +him for months yet, at least. You know, my good fellow, you must take every +possible care to pick up what good breeding you can, if I take the trouble +to put you in the way of good society, and tell you where my private +birds'-nests are, like the green schoolboy some poet or other talks of." + +"He is no lord of mine," I answered, "in any sense of the word, and +therefore I shall not call him so." + +"Upon my honour! here is a young gentleman who intends to rise in the +world, and then commences by trying to walk through the first post he +meets! Noodle! can't you do like me, and get out of the carts' way when +they come by? If you intend to go ahead, you must just dodge in and out +like a dog at a fair. 'She stoops to conquer' is my motto, and a precious +good one too." + +"I have no wish to conquer Lord Lynedale, and so I shall not stoop to him." + +"I have, then; and to very good purpose, too. I am his whetstone, for +polishing up that classical wit of his on, till he carries it into +Parliament to astonish the country squires. He fancies himself a second +Goethe, I hav'n't forgot his hitting at me, before a large supper party, +with a certain epigram of that old turkeycock's about the whale having his +unmentionable parasite--and the great man likewise. Whale, indeed! I bide +my time, Alton, my boy--I bide my time; and then let your grand aristocrat +look out! If he does not find the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout +holding harpoon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it's a pity, +Alton my boy!" + +And he burst into a coarse laugh, tossed himself down on the sofa, and +re-lighted his meerschaum. + +"He seemed to me," I answered, "to have a peculiar courtesy and liberality +of mind towards those below him in rank." + +"Oh! he had, had he? Now, I'll just put you up to a dodge. He intends to +come the Mirabeau--fancies his mantle has fallen on him--prays before the +fellow's bust, I believe, if one knew the truth, for a double portion of +his spirit; and therefore it is a part of his game to ingratiate himself +with all pot-boy-dom, while at heart he is as proud, exclusive an +aristocrat, as ever wore nobleman's hat. At all events, you may get +something out of him, if you play your cards well--or, rather, help me +to play mine; for I consider him as my property, and you only as my +aide-de-camp." + +"I shall play no one's cards," I answered, sulkily. "I am doing work +fairly, and shall be fairly paid for it, and keep my own independence." + +"Independence--hey-day! Have you forgotten that, after all, you are +my--guest, to call it by the mildest term?" + +"Do you upbraid me with that?" I said, starting up. "Do you expect me to +live on your charity, on condition of doing your dirty work? You do not +know me, sir. I leave your roof this instant!" + +"You do not!" answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang over the sofa, and +set his back against the door. "Come, come, you Will-o'-the-Wisp, as full +of flights, and fancies, and vagaries, as a sick old maid! can't you see +which side your bread is buttered? Sit down, I say! Don't you know that I'm +as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do parade a little Gil +Bias morality now and then, just for fun's sake? Do you think I should be +so open with it, if I meant anything very diabolic? There--sit down, and +don't go into King Cambyses' vein, or Queen Hecuba's tears either, which +you seem inclined to do." + +"I know you have been very generous to me," I said, penitently; "but a +kindness becomes none when you are upbraided with it." + +"So say the copybooks--I deny it. At all events, I'll say no more; and +you shall sit down there, and write as still as a mouse till two, while +I tackle this never-to-be-enough-by-unhappy-third-years'-men-execrated +Griffin's Optics." + + * * * * * + +At four that afternoon, I knocked, proofs in hand, at the door of Lord +Lynedale's rooms in the King's Parade. The door was opened by a little +elderly groom, grey-coated, grey-gaitered, grey-haired, grey-visaged. He +had the look of a respectable old family retainer, and his exquisitely +neat groom's dress gave him a sort of interest in my eyes. Class costumes, +relics though they are of feudalism, carry a charm with them. They are +symbolic, definitive; they bestow a personality on the wearer, which +satisfies the mind, by enabling it instantly to classify him, to connect +him with a thousand stories and associations; and to my young mind, the +wiry, shrewd, honest, grim old serving-man seemed the incarnation of all +the wonders of Newmarket, and the hunting-kennel, and the steeple-chase, +of which I had read, with alternate admiration and contempt, in the +newspapers. He ushered me in with a good breeding which surprised +me;--without insolence to me, or servility to his master; both of which I +had been taught to expect. + +Lord Lynedale bade me very courteously sit down while he examined the +proofs. I looked round the low-wainscoted apartment, with its narrow +mullioned windows, in extreme curiosity. What a real nobleman's abode could +be like, was naturally worth examining, to one who had, all his life, heard +of the aristocracy as of some mythic Titans--whether fiends or gods, being +yet a doubtful point--altogether enshrined on "cloudy Olympus," invisible +to mortal ken. The shelves were gay with morocco, Russia leather, and +gilding--not much used, as I thought, till my eye caught one of the +gorgeously-bound volumes lying on the table in a loose cover of polished +leather--a refinement of which poor I should never have dreamt. The walls +were covered with prints, which soon turned my eyes from everything else, +to range delighted over Landseers, Turners, Roberts's Eastern sketches, +the ancient Italian masters; and I recognized, with a sort of friendly +affection, an old print of my favourite St. Sebastian, in the Dulwich +Gallery. It brought back to my mind a thousand dreams, and a thousand +sorrows. Would those dreams be ever realized? Might this new acquaintance +possibly open some pathway towards their fulfilment?--some vista towards +the attainment of a station where they would, at least, be less chimerical? +And at that thought, my heart beat loud with hope. The room was choked up +with chairs and tables, of all sorts of strange shapes and problematical +uses. The floor was strewed with skins of bear, deer, and seal. In a corner +lay hunting-whips, and fishing-rods, foils, boxing-gloves, and gun-cases; +while over the chimney-piece, an array of rich Turkish pipes, all amber and +enamel, contrasted curiously with quaint old swords and daggers--bronze +classic casts, upon Gothic oak brackets, and fantastic scraps of +continental carving. On the centre table, too, reigned the same rich +profusion, or if you will, confusion--MSS., "Notes in Egypt," "Goethe's +Walverwandschaften," Murray's Hand-books, and "Plato's Republic." What +was there not there? And I chuckled inwardly, to see how _Bell's Life in +London_ and the _Ecclesiologist_ had, between them, got down "McCulloch +on Taxation," and were sitting, arm-in-arm, triumphantly astride of him. +Everything in the room, even to the fragrant flowers in a German glass, +spoke of a travelled and cultivated luxury--manifold tastes and powers of +self-enjoyment and self-improvement, which, Heaven forgive me if I envied, +as I looked upon them. If I, now, had had one-twentieth part of those +books, prints, that experience of life, not to mention that physical +strength and beauty, which stood towering there before the fire--so simple; +so utterly unconscious of the innate nobleness and grace which shone out +from every motion of those stately limbs and features--all the delicacy +which blood can give, combined, as one does sometimes see, with the broad +strength of the proletarian--so different from poor me!--and so different, +too, as I recollected with perhaps a savage pleasure, from the miserable, +stunted specimens of over-bred imbecility whom I had often passed in +London! A strange question that of birth! and one in which the philosopher, +in spite of himself, must come to democratic conclusions. For, after +all, the physical and intellectual superiority of the high-born is only +preserved, as it was in the old Norman times, by the continual practical +abnegation of the very caste-lie on which they pride themselves--by +continual renovation of their race, by intermarriage with the ranks below +them. The blood of Odin flowed in the veins of Norman William; true--and so +did the tanner's of Falaise! + +At last he looked up and spoke courteously-- + +"I'm afraid I have kept you long; but now, here is for your corrections, +which are capital. I have really to thank you for a lesson in writing +English." And he put a sovereign into my hand. + +"I am very sorry," said I, "but I have no change." + +"Never mind that. Your work is well worth the money." + +"But," I said, "you agreed with me for five shillings a sheet, and--I do +not wish to be rude, but I cannot accept your kindness. We working men make +a rule of abiding by our wages, and taking nothing which looks like--" + +"Well, well--and a very good rule it is. I suppose, then, I must find out +some way for you to earn more. Good afternoon." And he motioned me out +of the room, followed me down stairs, and turned off towards the College +Gardens. + +I wandered up and down, feeding my greedy eyes, till I found myself again +upon the bridge where I had stood that morning, gazing with admiration +and astonishment at a scene which I have often expected to see painted or +described, and which, nevertheless, in spite of its unique magnificence, +seems strangely overlooked by those who cater for the public taste, with +pen and pencil. The vista of bridges, one after another spanning the +stream; the long line of great monastic palaces, all unlike, and yet all in +harmony, sloping down to the stream, with their trim lawns and ivied walls, +their towers and buttresses; and opposite them, the range of rich gardens +and noble timber-trees, dimly seen through which, at the end of the +gorgeous river avenue, towered the lofty buildings of St. John's. The whole +scene, under the glow of a rich May afternoon, seemed to me a fragment +out of the "Arabian Nights" or Spencer's "Fairy Queen." I leaned upon the +parapet, and gazed, and gazed, so absorbed in wonder and enjoyment, that I +was quite unconscious, for some time, that Lord Lynedale was standing by my +side, engaged in the same employment. He was not alone. Hanging on his arm +was a lady, whose face, it seemed to me, I ought to know. It certainly was +one not to be easily forgotten. She was beautiful, but with the face and +figure rather of a Juno than a Venus--dark, imperious, restless--the lips +almost too firmly set, the brow almost too massive and projecting--a queen, +rather to be feared than loved--but a queen still, as truly royal as the +man into whose face she was looking up with eager admiration and delight, +as he pointed out to her eloquently the several beauties of the landscape. +Her dress was as plain as that of any Quaker; but the grace of its +arrangement, of every line and fold, was enough, without the help of the +heavy gold bracelet on her wrist, to proclaim her a fine lady; by which +term, I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and +manner, down to every gesture, which Heaven forbid that I, professing to be +a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful; and therefore I welcome it, in +the name of the Author of all beauty. I value it so highly, that I would +fain see it extend, not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, +but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the labourer's hovel, and the +needlewoman's garret. + +Half in bashfulness, half in the pride which shrinks from anything like +intrusion, I was moving away; but the nobleman, recognising me with a smile +and a nod, made some observation on the beauty of the scene before us. +Before I could answer, however, I saw that his companion's eyes were fixed +intently on my face. + +"Is this," she said to Lord Lynedale, "the young person of whom you were +speaking to me just now? I fancy that I recollect him, though, I dare say, +he has forgotten me." + +If I had forgotten the face, that voice, so peculiarly rich, deep, and +marked in its pronunciation of every syllable, recalled her instantly to my +mind. It was the dark lady of the Dulwich Gallery! + +"I met you, I think," I said, "at the picture gallery at Dulwich, and you +were kind enough, and--and some persons who were with you, to talk to me +about a picture there." + +"Yes; Guido's St. Sebastian. You seemed fond of reading then. I am glad to +see you at college." + +I explained that I was not at college. That led to fresh gentle questions +on her part, till I had given her all the leading points of my history. +There was nothing in it of which I ought to have been ashamed. + +She seemed to become more and more interested in my story, and her +companion also. + +"And have you tried to write? I recollect my uncle advising you to try a +poem on St. Sebastian. It was spoken, perhaps, in jest; but it will not, I +hope, have been labour lost, if you have taken it in earnest." + +"Yes--I have written on that and on other subjects, during the last few +years." + +"Then, you must let us see them, if you have them with you. I think my +uncle, Arthur, might like to look over them; and if they were fit for +publication, he might be able to do something towards it." + +"At all events," said Lord Lynedale, "a self-educated author is always +interesting. Bring any of your poems, that you have with you, to the Eagle +this afternoon, and leave them there for Dean Winnstay; and to-morrow +morning, if you have nothing better to do, call there between ten and +eleven o'clock." + +He wrote me down the dean's address, and nodding a civil good morning, +turned away with his queenly companion, while I stood gazing after him, +wondering whether all noblemen and high-born ladies were like them in +person and in spirit--a question which, in spite of many noble exceptions, +some of them well known and appreciated by the working men, I am afraid +must be answered in the negative. + +I took my MSS. to the Eagle, and wandered out once more, instinctively, +among those same magnificent trees at the back of the colleges, to enjoy +the pleasing torment of expectation. "My uncle!" was he the same old man +whom I had seen at the gallery; and if so, was Lillian with him? Delicious +hope! And yet, what if she was with him--what to me? But yet I sat silent, +dreaming, all the evening, and hurried early to bed--not to sleep, but to +lie and dream on and on, and rise almost before light, eat no breakfast, +and pace up and down, waiting impatiently for the hour at which I was to +find out whether my dream, was true. + +And it was true! The first object I saw, when I entered the room, was +Lillian, looking more beautiful than ever. The child of sixteen had +blossomed into the woman of twenty. The ivory and vermilion of the +complexion had toned down together into still richer hues. The dark hazel +eyes shone with a more liquid lustre. The figure had become more rounded, +without losing a line of that fairy lightness, with which her light +morning-dress, with its delicate French semi-tones of colour, gay and +yet not gaudy, seemed to harmonize. The little plump jewelled hands--the +transparent chestnut hair, banded round the beautiful oval masque--the tiny +feet, which, as Suckling has it, + + Underneath her petticoat + Like little mice peeped in and out-- + +I could have fallen down, fool that I was! and worshipped--what? I could +not tell then, for I cannot tell even now. + +The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers, +meditatively, on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, choking--my eyes +devouring my idol--forgetting why I had come--seeing nothing but +her--listening for nothing but the opening of these lips. I believe the +dean was some sentences deep in his oration, before I became conscious +thereof. + +"--And I think I may tell you, at once, that I have been very much +surprised and gratified with them. They evince, on the whole, a far +greater acquaintance with the English classic-models, and with the laws of +rhyme and melody, than could have been expected from a young man of your +class--_macte virtute puer_. Have you read any Latin?" + +"A little." And I went on staring at Lillian, who looked up, furtively, +from her work, every now and then, to steal a glance at me, and set my poor +heart thumping still more fiercely against my side. + +"Very good; you will have the less trouble, then, in the preparation +for college. You will find out for yourself, of course, the immense +disadvantages of self-education. The fact is, my dear lord" (turning to +Lord Lynedale), "it is only useful as an indication of a capability of +being educated by others. One never opens a book written by working men, +without shuddering at a hundred faults of style. However, there are some +very tolerable attempts among these--especially the imitations of Milton's +'Comus.'" + +Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations; but such, no doubt, +they were. + +"I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence on your writing. +He is a guide as irregular in taste, as unorthodox in doctrine; though +there are some pretty things in him now and then. And you have caught his +melody tolerably here, now--" + +"Oh, that is such a sweet thing!" said Lillian. "Do you know, I read it +over and over last night, and took it up-stairs with me. How very fond +of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so +passionately the longing after them." + +That voice once more! It intoxicated me, so that I hardly knew what I +stammered out--something about working men having very few opportunities +of indulging the taste for--I forget what. I believe I was on the point +of running off into some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady's +warning eye on me. + +"Ah, yes! I forgot. I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little +opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an +unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college +and make him a clergyman!" + +Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that +very "_he_" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a +man--an equal; but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over, and +examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and +undeserved benevolence. + +"Gently, gently, fair lady! We must not be as headlong as some people would +kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise +into a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in +that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training +college; St. Mark's, I should say, on the whole, might, by its strong +Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of +_sansculottism_. You understand me, my lord? And, then, if he distinguished +himself there, it would be time to think of getting him a sizarship." + +"Poor Pegasus in harness!" half smiled, half sighed, the dark lady. + +"Just the sort of youth," whispered Lord Lynedale, loud enough for me to +hear, "to take out with us to the Mediterranean as secretary--s'il y avait +là de la morale, of course--" + +Yes--and of course, too, the tailor's boy was not expected to understand +French. But the most absurd thing was, how everybody, except perhaps the +dark lady, seemed to take for granted that I felt myself exceedingly +honoured, and must consider it, as a matter of course, the greatest +possible stretch of kindness thus to talk me over, and settle everything +for me, as if I was not a living soul, but a plant in a pot. Perhaps they +were not unsupported by experience. I suppose too many of us would have +thought it so; there are flunkeys in all ranks, and to spare. Perhaps the +true absurdity was the way in which I sat, demented, inarticulate, staring +at Lillian, and only caring for any word which seemed to augur a chance of +seeing her again; instead of saying, as I felt, that I had no wish whatever +to rise above my station; no intention whatever of being sent to training +schools or colleges, or anywhere else at the expense of other people. And +therefore it was that I submitted blindly, when the dean, who looked as +kind, and was really, I believe, as kind as ever was human being, turned to +me with a solemn authoritative voice-- + +"Well, my young friend, I must say that I am, on the whole, very much +pleased with your performance. It corroborates, my dear lord, the +assertion, for which I have been so often ridiculed, that there are many +real men, capable of higher things, scattered up and down among the masses. +Attend to me, sir!" (a hint which I suspect I very much wanted). "Now, +recollect; if it should be hereafter in our power to assist your prospects +in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the +higher classes, which I am sorry to see in your MSS. As you know more of +the world, you will find that the poor are not by any means as ill used as +they are taught, in these days, to believe. The rich have their sorrows +too--no one knows it better than I"--(and he played pensively with his gold +pencil-case)--"and good and evil are pretty equally distributed among all +ranks, by a just and merciful God. I advise you most earnestly, as you +value your future success in life, to give up reading those unprincipled +authors, whose aim is to excite the evil passions of the multitude; and +to shut your ears betimes to the extravagant calumnies of demagogues, who +make tools of enthusiastic and imaginative minds for their own selfish +aggrandisement. Avoid politics; the workman has no more to do with them +than the clergyman. We are told, on divine authority, to fear God and the +king, and meddle not with those who are given to change. Rather put before +yourself the example of such a man as the excellent Dr. Brown, one of the +richest and most respected men of the university, with whom I hope to have +the pleasure of dining this evening--and yet that man actually, for several +years of his life, worked at a carpenter's bench!" + +I too had something to say about all that. I too knew something about +demagogues and working men: but the sight of Lillian made me a coward; and +I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half +painful, by its contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter's +bench, and fulfilled his mission--not by an old age of wealth, +respectability, and port wine; but on the Cross of Calvary. After all, the +worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer. + +"Next--I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get his opinion as +to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that I wish you to build +much on the chance. It is not necessary that you should be a poet. I should +prefer mathematics for you, as a methodic discipline of the intellect. +Most active minds write poetry, at a certain age--I wrote a good deal, I +recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing. This haste to rush +into print is one of the bad signs of the times--a symptom of the unhealthy +activity which was first called out by the French revolution. In the +Elizabethan age, every decently-educated gentleman was able, as a matter of +course, to indite a sonnet to his mistress's eye-brow, or an epigram on his +enemy; and yet he never dreamt of printing them. One of the few rational +things I have met with, Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable +pet Mr. Carlyle--though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed +me to read much--is the remark that 'speech is silver'--'silvern' he calls +it, pedantically--'while silence is golden.'" + +At this point of the sermon, Lillian fled from the room, to my extreme +disgust. But still the old man prosed-- + +"I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next +week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising +young man; and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the +end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more +of you at my house at D * * * *, about * * * * miles from this place. Good +morning." + +I went, in rapture at the last announcement--and yet my conscience smote +me. I had not stood up for the working men. I had heard them calumniated, +and held my tongue--but I was to see Lillian. I had let the dean fancy I +was willing to become a pensioner on his bounty--that I was a member of +the Church of England, and willing to go to a Church Training School--but +I was to see Lillian. I had lowered myself in my own eyes--but I had seen +Lillian. Perhaps I exaggerated my own offences: however that may be, love +soon, silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin's rooms on my +return. + + * * * * * + +That week passed rapidly and happily. I was half amused with the change in +my cousin's demeanour. I had evidently risen immensely in his eyes; and I +could not help applying, in my heart, to him, Mr. Carlyle's dictum about +the valet species--how they never honour the unaccredited hero, having +no eye to find him out till properly accredited, and countersigned, and +accoutred with full uniform and diploma by that great god, Public Opinion. +I saw through the motive of his new-fledged respect for me--and yet +encouraged it; for it flattered my vanity. The world must forgive me. It +was something for the poor tailor to find himself somewhat appreciated at +last, even outwardly. And besides, this sad respect took a form which was +very tempting to me now--though the week before it was just the one which +I should have repelled with scorn. George became very anxious to lend me +money, to order me clothes at his own tailor's, and set me up in various +little toilette refinements, that I might make a respectable appearance +at the dean's. I knew that he consulted rather the honour of the family, +than my good; but I did not know that his aim was also to get me into his +power; and I refused more and more weakly at each fresh offer, and at last +consented, in an evil hour, to sell my own independence, for the sake of +indulging my love-dream, and appearing to be what I was not. + +I saw little of the University men; less than I might have done; less, +perhaps, than I ought to have done. My cousin did not try to keep me from +them; they, whenever I met them, did not shrink from me, and were civil +enough: but I shrank from them. My cousin attributed my reserve to modesty, +and praised me for it in his coarse fashion: but he was mistaken. Pride, +rather, and something very like envy, kept me silent. Always afraid (at +that period of my career) of young men of my own age, I was doubly afraid +of these men; not because they were cleverer than I, for they were not, but +because I fancied I had no fair chance with them; they had opportunities +which I had not, read and talked of books of which I knew nothing; and when +they did touch on matters which I fancied I understood, it was from a point +of view so different from mine, that I had to choose, as I thought, between +standing up alone to be baited by the whole party, or shielding myself +behind a proud and somewhat contemptuous silence. I looked on them as +ignorant aristocrats; while they looked on me, I verily believe now, as a +very good sort of fellow, who ought to talk well, but would not; and went +their way carelessly. The truth is, I did envy those men. I did not envy +them their learning; for the majority of men who came into my cousin's room +had no learning to envy, being rather brilliant and agreeable men than +severe students; but I envied them their opportunities of learning; and +envied them just as much their opportunities of play--their boating, their +cricket, their foot-ball, their riding, and their gay confident carriage, +which proceeds from physical health and strength, and which I mistook for +the swagger of insolence; while Parker's Piece, with its games, was a sight +which made me grind my teeth, when I thought of the very different chance +of physical exercise which falls to the lot of a London artisan. + +And still more did I envy them when I found that many of them combined, as +my cousin did, this physical exercise with really hard mental work, and +found the one help the other. It was bitter to me--whether it ought to have +been so or not--to hear of prizemen, wranglers, fellows of colleges, as +first rate oars, boxers, foot-ball players; and my eyes once fairly filled +with tears, when, after the departure of a little fellow no bigger or +heavier than myself, but with the eye and the gait of a game-cock, I was +informed that he was "bow-oar in the University eight, and as sure to be +senior classic next year as he has a head on his shoulders." And I thought +of my nights of study in the lean-to garret, and of the tailor's workshop, +and of Sandy's den, and said to myself bitter words, which I shall not +set down. Let gentlemen readers imagine them for themselves; and judge +rationally and charitably of an unhealthy working-man like me, if +his tongue be betrayed, at moments, to envy, hatred, malice, and all +uncharitableness. + +However, one happiness I had--books. I read in my cousin's room from +morning till night. He gave me my meals hospitably enough: but disappeared +every day about four to "hall"; after which he did not reappear till eight, +the interval being taken up, he said, in "wines" and an hour of billiards. +Then he sat down to work, and read steadily and well till twelve, while +I, nothing loth, did the same; and so passed, rapidly enough, my week at +Cambridge. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +A CATHEDRAL TOWN. + + +At length, the wished-for day had arrived; and, with my cousin, I was +whirling along, full of hope and desire, towards the cathedral town of +D * * * *--through a flat fen country, which though I had often heard it +described as ugly, struck my imagination much. The vast height and width +of the sky-arch, as seen from those flats as from an ocean--the grey haze +shrouding the horizon of our narrow land-view, and closing us in, till +we seemed to be floating through infinite space, on a little platform of +earth; the rich poplar-fringed farms, with their herds of dappled oxen--the +luxuriant crops of oats and beans--the tender green of the tall-rape, a +plant till then unknown to me--the long, straight, silver dykes, with their +gaudy carpets of strange floating water-plants, and their black banks, +studded with the remains of buried forests--the innumerable draining-mills, +with their creaking sails and groaning wheels--the endless rows of pollard +willows, through which the breeze moaned and rung, as through the strings +of some vast Æolian harp; the little island knolls in that vast sea of +fen, each with its long village street, and delicately taper spire; all +this seemed to me to contain an element of new and peculiar beauty. + +"Why!" exclaims the reading public, if perchance it ever sees this tale of +mine, in its usual prurient longing after anything like personal gossip, or +scandalous anecdote--"why, there is no cathedral town which begins with a +D! Through the fen, too! He must mean either Ely, Lincoln, or Peterborough; +that's certain." Then, at one of those places, they find there is dean--not +of the name of Winnstay, true--"but his name begins with a W; and he has +a pretty daughter--no, a niece; well, that's very near it;--it must be +him. No; at another place--there is not a dean, true--but a canon, or an +archdeacon-something of that kind; and he has a pretty daughter, really; +and his name begins--not with W, but with Y; well, that's the last letter +of Winnstay, if it is not the first: that must be the poor man! What a +shame to have exposed his family secrets in that way!" And then a whole +circle of myths grow up round the man's story. It is credibly ascertained +that I am the man who broke into his house last year, after having made +love to his housemaid, and stole his writing-desk and plate--else, why +should a burglar steal family-letters, if he had not some interest in +them?... And before the matter dies away, some worthy old gentleman, who +has not spoken to a working man since he left his living, thirty years ago, +and hates a radical as he does the Pope, receives two or three anonymous +letters, condoling with him on the cruel betrayal of his confidence--base +ingratitude for undeserved condescension, &c., &c.; and, perhaps, with an +enclosure of good advice for his lovely daughter. + +But wherever D * * * * is, we arrived there; and with a beating heart, +I--and I now suspect my cousin also--walked up the sunny slopes, where +the old convent had stood, now covered with walled gardens and noble +timber-trees, and crowned by the richly fretted towers of the cathedral, +which we had seen, for the last twenty miles, growing gradually larger and +more distinct across the level flat. "Ely?" "No; Lincoln!" "Oh! but really, +it's just as much like Peterborough!" Never mind, my dear reader; the +essence of the fact, as I think, lies not quite so much in the name of the +place, as in what was done there--to which I, with all the little respect +which I can muster, entreat your attention. + +It is not from false shame at my necessary ignorance, but from a fear lest +I should bore my readers with what seems to them trivial, that I refrain +from dilating on many a thing which struck me as curious in this my first +visit to the house of an English gentleman. I must say, however, though +I suppose that it will be numbered, at least, among trite remarks, if +not among trivial ones, that the wealth around me certainly struck me, +as it has others, as not very much in keeping with the office of one who +professed to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. But I salved +over that feeling, being desirous to see everything in the brightest light, +with the recollection that the dean had a private fortune of his own; +though it did seem at moments, that if a man has solemnly sworn to devote +himself, body and soul, to the cause of the spiritual welfare of the +nation, that vow might be not unfairly construed to include his money as +well as his talents, time, and health: unless, perhaps, money is considered +by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to be +given to God--a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and +universally respected archbishop, living within a quarter of a mile of one +of the worst _infernos_ of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy--can +yet find it in his heart to save £120,000 out of church revenues, and +leave it to his family; though it will not explain how Irish bishops can +reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, +large fortunes--for I suppose from fifty to a hundred thousand pounds +is something--saved from fees and tithes, taken from the pockets of a +Roman Catholic population, whom they have been put there to convert to +Protestantism for the last three hundred years--with what success, all the +world knows. Of course, it is a most impertinent, and almost a blasphemous +thing, for a working man to dare to mention such subjects. Is it not +"speaking evil of dignities"? Strange, by-the-by, that merely to mention +facts, without note or comment, should be always called "speaking evil"! +Does not that argue ill for the facts themselves? Working men think so; but +what matter what "the swinish multitude" think? + +When I speak of wealth, I do not mean that the dean's household would +have been considered by his own class at all too luxurious. He would have +been said, I suppose, to live in a "quiet, comfortable, gentlemanlike +way"--"everything very plain and very good." It included a butler--a +quiet, good-natured old man--who ushered us into our bedrooms; a footman, +who opened the door--a sort of animal for which I have an extreme +aversion--young, silly, conceited, over-fed, florid--who looked just the +man to sell his soul for a livery, twice as much food as he needed, and the +opportunity of unlimited flirtations with the maids; and a coachman, very +like other coachmen, whom I saw taking a pair of handsome carriage-horses +out to exercise, as we opened the gate. + +The old man, silently and as a matter of course, unpacked for me my +little portmanteau (lent me by my cousin), and placed my things neatly in +various drawers--went down, brought up a jug of hot water, put it on the +washing-table--told me that dinner was at six--that the half-hour bell +rang at half-past five--and that, if I wanted anything, the footman would +answer the bell (bells seeming a prominent idea in his theory of the +universe)--and so left me, wondering at the strange fact that free men, +with free wills, do sell themselves, by the hundred thousand, to perform +menial offices for other men, not for love, but for money; becoming, to +define them strictly, bell-answering animals; and are honest, happy, +contented, in such a life. A man-servant, a soldier, and a Jesuit, are to +me the three great wonders of humanity--three forms of moral suicide, for +which I never had the slightest gleam of sympathy, or even comprehension. + + * * * * * + +At last we went down to dinner, after my personal adornments had been +carefully superintended by my cousin, who gave me, over and above, various +warnings and exhortations as to my behaviour; which, of course, took due +effect, in making me as nervous, constrained, and affected, as possible. +When I appeared in the drawing-room, I was kindly welcomed by the dean, the +two ladies, and Lord Lynedale. + +But, as I stood fidgeting and blushing, sticking my arms and legs, and head +into all sorts of quaint positions--trying one attitude, and thinking it +looked awkward, and so exchanged it for another, more awkward still--my eye +fell suddenly on a slip of paper, which had conveyed itself, I never knew +how, upon the pages of the Illustrated Book of Ballads, which I was turning +over:-- + +"Be natural, and you will be gentlemanlike. If you wish others to forget +your rank, do not forget it yourself. If you wish others to remember you +with pleasure, forget yourself; and be just what God has made you." + +I could not help fancying that the lesson, whether intentionally or not, +was meant for me; and a passing impulse made me take up the slip, fold it +together, and put it into my bosom. Perhaps it was Lillian's handwriting! I +looked round at the ladies; but their faces were each buried behind a book. + +We went in to dinner; and, to my delight, I sat next to my goddess, while +opposite me was my cousin. Luckily, I had got some directions from him as +to what to say and do, when my wonders, the servants, thrust eatables and +drinkables over nay shoulders. + +Lillian and my cousin chatted away about church-architecture, and the +restorations which were going on at the cathedral; while I, for the first +half of dinner, feasted my eyes with the sight of a beauty, in which I +seemed to discover every moment some new excellence. Every time I looked +up at her, my eyes dazzled, my face burnt, my heart sank, and soft thrills +ran through every nerve. And yet, Heaven knows, my emotions were as pure as +those of an infant. It was beauty, longed for, and found at last, which I +adored as a thing not to be possessed, but worshipped. The desire, even the +thought, of calling her my own, never crossed my mind. I felt that I could +gladly die, if by death I could purchase the permission to watch her. I +understood, then, and for ever after, the pure devotion of the old knights +and troubadours of chivalry. I seemed to myself to be their brother--one +of the holy guild of poet-lovers. I was a new Petrarch, basking in the +light-rays of a new Laura. I gazed, and gazed, and found new life in +gazing, and was content. + +But my simple bliss was perfected, when she suddenly turned to me, and +began asking me questions on the very points on which I was best able to +answer. She talked about poetry, Tennyson and Wordsworth; asked me if I +understood Browning's Sordello; and then comforted me, after my stammering +confession that I did not, by telling me she was delighted to hear that; +for she did not understand it either, and it was so pleasant to have a +companion in ignorance. Then she asked me, if I was much struck with the +buildings in Cambridge?--had they inspired me with any verses yet?--I was +bound to write something about them--and so on; making the most commonplace +remarks look brilliant, from the ease and liveliness with which they were +spoken, and the tact with which they were made pleasant to the listener: +while I wondered at myself, for enjoying from her lips the flippant, +sparkling tattle, which had hitherto made young women to me objects of +unspeakable dread, to be escaped by crossing the street, hiding behind +doors, and rushing blindly into back-yards and coal-holes. + +The ladies left the room; and I, with Lillian's face glowing bright in my +imagination, as the crimson orb remains on the retina of the closed eye, +after looking intently at the sun, sat listening to a pleasant discussion +between the dean and the nobleman, about some country in the East, which +they had both visited, and greedily devouring all the new facts which, they +incidentally brought forth out of the treasures of their highly cultivated +minds. + +I was agreeably surprised (don't laugh, reader) to find that I was allowed +to drink water; and that the other men drank not more than a glass or two +of wine, after the ladies had retired. I had, somehow, got both lords and +deans associated in my mind with infinite swillings of port wine, and +bacchanalian orgies, and sat down at first, in much fear and trembling, +lest I should be compelled to join, under penalties of salt-and-water; but +I had made up my mind, stoutly, to bear anything rather than get drunk; +and so I had all the merit of a temperance-martyr, without any of its +disagreeables. + +"Well" said I to myself, smiling in spirit, "what would my Chartist +friends say if they saw me here? Not even Crossthwaite himself could +find a flaw in the appreciation of merit for its own sake, the courtesy +and condescension--ah! but he would complain of it, simply for being +condescension." But, after all, what else could it be? Were not these men +more experienced, more learned, older than myself? They were my superiors; +it was in vain for me to attempt to hide it from myself. But the wonder +was, that they themselves were the ones to appear utterly unconscious of +it. They treated me as an equal; they welcomed me--the young viscount and +the learned dean--on the broad ground of a common humanity; as I believe +hundreds more of their class would do, if we did not ourselves take a pride +in estranging them from us--telling them that fraternization between our +classes is impossible, and then cursing them for not fraternizing with us. +But of that, more hereafter. + +At all events, now my bliss was perfect. No! I was wrong--a higher +enjoyment than all awaited me, when, going into the drawing-room, I found +Lillian singing at the piano. I had no idea that music was capable of +expressing and conveying emotions so intense and ennobling. My experience +was confined to street music, and to the bawling at the chapel. And, as +yet, Mr. Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that of +kings, and given to every workman a free entrance into the magic world of +harmony and melody, where he may prove his brotherhood with Mozart and +Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Great unconscious demagogue!--leader of +the people, and labourer in the cause of divine equality!--thy reward is +with the Father of the people! + +The luscious softness of the Italian airs overcame me with a delicious +enervation. Every note, every interval, each shade of expression spoke to +me--I knew not what: and yet they spoke to my heart of hearts. A spirit +out of the infinite heaven seemed calling to my spirit, which longed to +answer--and was dumb--and could only vent itself in tears, which welled +unconsciously forth, and eased my heart from the painful tension of +excitement. + + * * * * * + Her voice is hovering o'er my soul--it lingers, + O'ershadowing it with soft and thrilling wings; + The blood and life within those snowy fingers + Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. + My brain is wild, my breath comes quick. + The blood is listening in my frame; + And thronging shadows, fast and thick, + Fall on my overflowing eyes. + My heart is quivering like a flame; + As morning-dew that in the sunbeam dies, + I am dissolved in these consuming ecstacies. + * * * * * + +The dark lady, Miss Staunton, as I ought to call her, saw my emotion, and, +as I thought unkindly, checked the cause of it at once. + +"Pray do not give us any more of those die-away Italian airs, Lillian. Sing +something manful, German or English, or anything you like, except those +sentimental wailings." + +Lillian stopped, took another book, and commenced, after a short prelude, +one of my own songs. Surprise and pleasure overpowered me more utterly than +the soft southern melodies had done. I was on the point of springing up and +leaving the room, when my raptures were checked by our host, who turned +round, and stopped short in an oration on the geology of Upper Egypt. + +"What's that about brotherhood and freedom, Lillian? We don't want anything +of that kind here." + +"It's only a popular London song, papa," answered she, with an arch smile. + +"Or likely to become so," added Miss Staunton, in her marked dogmatic tone. + +"I am very sorry for London, then." And he returned to the deserts. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +THE MAN OF SCIENCE. + + +After breakfast the next morning, Lillian retired, saying laughingly, that +she must go and see after her clothing club and her dear old women at the +almshouse, which, of course, made me look on her as more an angel than +ever. And while George was left with Lord Lynedale, I was summoned to a +private conference with the dean, in his study. + +I found him in a room lined with cabinets of curiosities, and hung all over +with strange horns, bones, and slabs of fossils. But I was not allowed +much time to look about me; for he commenced at once on the subject of +my studies, by asking me whether I was willing to prepare myself for the +university, by entering on the study of mathematics? + +I felt so intense a repugnance to them, that at the risk of offending +him--perhaps, for what I knew, fatally--I dared to demur. He smiled-- + +"I am convinced, young man, that even if you intended to follow poetry as a +profession--and a very poor one you will find it--yet you will never attain +to any excellence therein, without far stricter mental discipline than +any to which you have been accustomed. That is why I abominate our modern +poets. They talk about the glory of the poetic vocation, as if they +intended to be kings and world-makers, and all the while they indulge +themselves in the most loose and desultory habits of thought. Sir, if they +really believed their own grandiloquent assumptions, they would feel that +the responsibility of their mental training was greater, not less, than +any one's else. Like the Quakers, they fancy that they honour inspiration +by supposing it to be only extraordinary and paroxysmic: the true poet, +like the rational Christian, believing that inspiration is continual +and orderly, that it reveals harmonious laws, not merely excites sudden +emotions. You understand me?" + +I did, tolerably; and subsequent conversations with him fixed the thoughts +sufficiently in my mind, to make me pretty sure that I am giving a faithful +verbal transcript of them. + +"You must study some science. Have you read any logic?" + +I mentioned Watts' "Logic," and Locke "On the Use of the +Understanding"--two books well known to reading artizans. + +"Ah," he said, "such books are very well, but they are merely popular. +'Aristotle,' 'Bitter on Induction,' and Kant's 'Prolegomena' and +'Logic'--when you had read them some seven or eight times over, you might +consider yourself as knowing somewhat about the matter." + +"I have read a little about induction in Whately." + +"Ah, very good book, but popular. Did you find that your method of thought +received any benefit from it?" + +"The truth is--I do not know whether I can quite express myself +clearly--but logic, like mathematics, seems to tell me too little about +things. It does not enlarge my knowledge of man or nature; and those are +what I thirst for. And you must remember--I hope I am not wrong in saying +it--that the case of a man of your class, who has the power of travelling, +of reading what he will, and seeing what he will, is very different from +that of an artisan, whose chances of observation are so sadly limited. You +must forgive us, if we are unwilling to spend our time over books which +tell us nothing about the great universe outside the shop-windows." + +He smiled compassionately. "Very true, my boy, There are two branches of +study, then, before you, and by either of them a competent subsistence is +possible, with good interest. Philology is one. But before you could arrive +at those depths in it which connect with ethnology, history, and geography, +you would require a lifetime of study. There remains yet another. I see you +stealing glances at those natural curiosities. In the study of them, you +would find, as I believe, more and more daily, a mental discipline superior +even to that which language or mathematics give. If I had been blest with +a son--but that is neither here nor there--it was my intention to have +educated him almost entirely as a naturalist. I think I should like to try +the experiment on a young man like yourself." + +Sandy Mackaye's definition of legislation for the masses, "Fiat +experimentum in corpore vili," rose up in my thoughts, and, half +unconsciously, passed my lips. The good old man only smiled. + +"That is not my reason, Mr. Locke. I should choose, by preference, a man +of your class for experiments, not because the nature is coarser, or less +precious in the scale of creation, but because I have a notion, for which, +like many others, I have been very much laughed at, that you are less +sophisticated, more simple and fresh from nature's laboratory, than the +young persons of the upper classes, who begin from the nursery to be more +or less trimmed up, and painted over by the artificial state of society--a +very excellent state, mind, Mr. Locke. Civilization is, next to +Christianity of course, the highest blessing; but not so good a state for +trying anthropological experiments on." + +I assured him of my great desire to be the subject of such an experiment; +and was encouraged by his smile to tell him something about my intense love +for natural objects, the mysterious pleasure which I had taken, from my +boyhood, in trying to classify them, and my visits to the British Museum, +for the purpose of getting at some general knowledge of the natural groups. + +"Excellent," he said, "young man; the very best sign I have yet seen in +you. And what have you read on these subjects?" + +I mentioned several books: Bingley, Bewick, "Humboldt's Travels," "The +Voyage of the Beagle," various scattered articles in the Penny and Saturday +Magazines, &c., &c. + +"Ah!" he said, "popular--you will find, if you will allow me to give you my +experience--" + +I assured him that I was only too much honoured--and I truly felt so. I +knew myself to be in the presence of my rightful superior--my master on +that very point of education which I idolized. Every sentence which he +spoke gave me fresh light on some matter or other; and I felt a worship for +him, totally irrespective of any vulgar and slavish respect for his rank +or wealth. The working man has no want for real reverence. Mr. Carlyle's +being a "gentlemen" has not injured his influence with the people. On the +contrary, it is the artisan's intense longing to find his real _lords_ and +guides, which makes him despise and execrate his sham ones. Whereof let +society take note. + +"Then," continued he, "your plan is to take up some one section of the +subject, and thoroughly exhaust that. Universal laws manifest themselves +only by particular instances. They say, man is the microcosm, Mr. Locke; +but the man of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its way. +It exemplifies, directly or indirectly, every physical law in the universe, +though it may not be two lines long. It is not only a part, but a mirror, +of the great whole. It has a definite relation to the whole world, and the +whole world has a relation to it. Really, by-the-by, I cannot give you a +better instance of what I mean, than in my little diatribe on the Geryon +Trifurcifer, a small reptile which I found, some years ago, inhabiting +the mud of the salt lakes of Balkhan, which fills up a long-desired link +between the Chelonia and the Perenni branchiate Batrachians, and, as I +think, though Professor Brown differs from me, connects both with the +Herbivorous Cetacea,--Professor Brown is an exceedingly talented man, but +a little too cautious in accepting any one's theories but his own. + +"There it is," he said, as he drew out of a drawer a little pamphlet of +some thirty pages--"an old man's darling. I consider that book the outcome +of thirteen years' labour." + +"It must be very deep," I replied, "to have been worth such long-continued +study." + +"Oh! science is her own reward. There is hardly a great physical law which +I have not brought to bear on the subject of that one small animal; and +above all--what is in itself worth a life's labour--I have, I believe, +discovered two entirely new laws of my own, though one of them, by-the-by, +has been broached by Professor Brown since, in his lectures. He might have +mentioned my name in connection with the subject, for I certainly imparted +my ideas to him, two years at least before the delivery of those lectures +of his. Professor Brown is a very great man, certainly, and a very +good man, but not quite so original as is generally supposed. Still, a +scientific man must expect his little disappointments and injustices. If +you were behind the scenes in the scientific world, I can assure you, +you would find as much party-spirit, and unfairness, and jealousy, and +emulation there, as anywhere else. Human nature, human nature, everywhere!" + +I said nothing, but thought the more; and took the book, promising to study +it carefully. + +"There is Cuvier's 'Animal Kingdom,' and a dictionary of scientific terms +to help you; and mind, it must be got up thoroughly, for I purpose to set +you an examination or two in it, a few days hence. Then I shall find out +whether you know what is worth all the information in the world." + +"What is that, sir?" + +"The art of getting information _artem discendi_, Mr. Locke, wherewith the +world is badly provided just now, as it is overstocked with the _artem +legendi_--the knack of running the eye over books, and fancying that it +understands them, because it can talk about them. You cannot play that +trick with my Geryon Trifurcifer, I assure you; he is as dry and tough as +his name. But, believe me, he is worth mastering, not because he is mine, +but simply because he is tough." + +I promised all diligence. + +"Very good. And be sure, if you intend to be a poet for these days (and I +really think you have some faculty for it), you must become a scientific +man. Science has made vast strides, and introduced entirely new modes of +looking at nature, and poets must live up to the age. I never read a word +of Goethe's verse, but I am convinced that he must be the great poet of +the day, just because he is the only one who has taken the trouble to go +into the details of practical science. And, in the mean time, I will give +you a lesson myself. I see you are longing to know the contents of these +cabinets. You shall assist me by writing out the names of this lot of +shells, just come from Australia, which I am now going to arrange." + +I set to work at once, under his directions; and passed that morning, and +the two or three following, delightfully. But I question whether the good +dean would have been well satisfied, had he known, how all his scientific +teaching confirmed my democratic opinions. The mere fact, that I could +understand these things when they were set before me, as well as any one +else, was to me a simple demonstration of the equality in worth, and +therefore in privilege, of all classes. It may be answered, that I had no +right to argue from myself to the mob; and that other working geniuses have +no right to demand universal enfranchisement for their whole class, just +because they, the exceptions, are fit for it. But surely it is hard to +call such an error, if it be one, "the insolent assumption of democratic +conceit," &c., &c. Does it not look more like the humility of men who +are unwilling to assert for themselves peculiar excellence, peculiar +privileges; who, like the apostles of old, want no glory, save that which +they can share with the outcast and the slave? Let society among other +matters, take note of that. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +CULTIVATED WOMEN. + + +I was thus brought in contact, for the first time in my life, with two +exquisite specimens of cultivated womanhood; and they naturally, as +the reader may well suppose, almost entirely engrossed my thoughts and +interest. + +Lillian, for so I must call her, became daily more and more agreeable; and +tried, as I fancied, to draw me out, and show me off to the best advantage; +whether from the desire of pleasing herself, or pleasing me, I know not, +and do not wish to know--but the consequences to my boyish vanity were such +as are more easy to imagine, than pleasant to describe. Miss Staunton, on +the other hand, became, I thought, more and more unpleasant; not that she +ever, for a moment, outstepped the bounds of the most perfect courtesy; but +her manner, which was soft to no one except to Lord Lynedale, was, when she +spoke to me, especially dictatorial and abrupt. She seemed to make a point +of carping at chance words of mine, and of setting me, down suddenly, by +breaking in with some severe, pithy observation, on conversations to which +she had been listening unobserved. She seemed, too, to view with dislike +anything like cordiality between me and Lillian--a dislike, which I was +actually at moments vain enough (such a creature is man!) to attribute +to--jealousy!!! till I began to suspect and hate her, as a proud, harsh, +and exclusive aristocrat. And my suspicion and hatred received their +confirmation, when, one morning, after an evening even more charming than +usual, Lillian came down, reserved, peevish, all but sulky, and showed that +that bright heaven of sunny features had room in it for a cloud, and that +an ugly one. But I, poor fool, only pitied her, made up my mind that some +one had ill-used her; and looked on her as a martyr--perhaps to that harsh +cousin of hers. + +That day was taken up with writing out answers to the dean's searching +questions on his pamphlet, in which, I believe, I acquitted myself +tolerably; and he seemed far more satisfied with my commentary than I was +with his text. He seemed to ignore utterly anything like religion, or even +the very notion of God, in his chains of argument. Nature was spoken of as +the wilier and producer of all the marvels which he describes; and every +word in the book, to my astonishment, might have been written just as +easily by an Atheist as by a dignitary of the Church of England. + +I could not help, that evening, hinting this defect, as delicately as I +could, to my good host, and was somewhat surprised to find that he did not +consider it a defect at all. + +"I am in no wise anxious to weaken the antithesis between natural and +revealed religion. Science may help the former, but it has absolutely +nothing to do with the latter. She stands on her own ground, has her own +laws, and is her own reward. Christianity is a matter of faith and of the +teaching of the Church. It must not go out of its way for science, and +science must not go out of her way for it; and where they seem to differ, +it is our duty to believe that they are reconcilable by fuller knowledge, +but not to clip truth in order to make it match with doctrine." + +"Mr. Carlyle," said Miss Staunton, in her abrupt way, "can see that the God +of Nature is the God of man." + +"Nobody denies that, my dear." + +"Except in every word and action; else why do they not write about Nature +as if it was the expression of a living, loving spirit, not merely a dead +machine?" + +"It may be very easy, my dear, for a Deist like Mr. Carlyle to see _his_ +God in Nature; but if he would accept the truths of Christianity, he would +find that there were deeper mysteries in them than trees and animals can +explain." + +"Pardon me, sir," I said, "but I think that a very large portion of +thoughtful working men agree with you, though, in their case, that opinion +has only increased their difficulties about Christianity. They complain +that they cannot identify the God of the Bible with the God of the world +around them; and one of their great complaints against Christianity is, +that it demands assent to mysteries which are independent of, and even +contradictory to, the laws of Nature." + +The old man was silent. + +"Mr. Carlyle is no Deist," said Miss Staunton; "and I am sure, that unless +the truths of Christianity contrive soon to get themselves justified by the +laws of science, the higher orders will believe in them as little as Mr. +Locke informs us that the working classes do." + +"You prophesy confidently, my darling." + +"Oh, Eleanor is in one of her prophetic moods to-night," said Lillian, +slyly. "She has been foretelling me I know not what misery and misfortune, +just because I choose to amuse myself in my own way." + +And she gave another sly pouting look at Eleanor, and then called me to +look over some engravings, chatting over them so charmingly!--and stealing, +every now and then, a pretty, saucy look at her cousin, which seemed to +say, "I shall do what I like, in spite of your predictions." + +This confirmed my suspicions that Eleanor had been trying to separate us; +and the suspicion received a further corroboration, indirect, and perhaps +very unfair, from the lecture which I got from my cousin after I went +up-stairs. + +He had been flattering me very much lately about "the impression" I was +making on the family, and tormenting me by compliments on the clever way +in which I "played my cards"; and when I denied indignantly any such +intention, patting me on the back, and laughing me down in a knowing way, +as much as to say that he was not to be taken in by my professions of +simplicity. He seemed to judge every one by himself, and to have no notion +of any middle characters between the mere green-horn and the deliberate +schemer. But to-night, after commencing with the usual compliments, he went +on: + +"Now, first let me give you one hint, and be thankful for it. Mind your +game with that Eleanor--Miss Staunton. She is a regular tyrant, I happen to +know: a strong-minded woman, with a vengeance. She manages every one here; +and unless you are in her good books, don't expect to keep your footing in +this house, my boy. So just mind and pay her a little more attention and +Miss Lillian a little less. After all, it is worth the trouble. She is +uncommonly well read; and says confounded clever things, too, when she +wakes up out of the sulks; and you may pick up a wrinkle or two from her, +worth pocketing. You mind what she says to you. You know she is going to be +married to Lord Lynedale." + +I nodded assent. + +"Well, then, if you want to hook him, you must secure her first." + +"I want to hook no one, George; I have told you that a thousand times." + +"Oh, no! certainly not--by no means! Why should you?" said the artful +dodger. And he swung, laughing, out of the room, leaving in my mind a +strange suspicion, of which I was ashamed, though I could not shake it off, +that he had remarked Eleanor's wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and +was willing, for some purpose of his own, to further that wish. The truth +is, I had very little respect for him, or trust in him: and I was learning +to look, habitually, for some selfish motive in all he said or did. +Perhaps, if I had acted more boldly upon what I did see, I should not have +been here now. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +SERMONS IN STONES. + + +The next afternoon was the last but one of my stay at D * * *. We were to +dine late, after sunset, and, before dinner, we went into the cathedral. +The choir had just finished practising. Certain exceedingly ill-looking +men, whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose +function was that of praising God, on the sole qualification of good bass +and tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and +behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves +from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and +pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us, with as little +reverence as Voltaire himself could have desired. + +I had often been in the cathedral before--indeed, we attended the service +daily, and I had been appalled, rather than astonished, by what I saw and +heard: the unintelligible service--the irreverent gabble of the choristers +and readers--the scanty congregation--the meagre portion of the vast +building which seemed to be turned to any use: but never more than that +evening, did I feel the desolateness, the doleful inutility, of that vast +desert nave, with its aisles and transepts--built for some purpose or other +now extinct. The whole place seemed to crush and sadden me; and I could not +re-echo Lillian's remark: + +"How those pillars, rising story above story, and those lines of pointed +arches, all lead the eye heavenward! It is a beautiful notion, that about +pointed architecture being symbolic of Christianity." + +"I ought to be very much ashamed of my stupidity," I answered; "but I +cannot feel that, though I believe I ought to do so. That vast groined +roof, with its enormous weight of hanging stone, seems to crush one--to +bar out the free sky above. Those pointed windows, too--how gloriously the +western sun is streaming through them! but their rich hues only dim and +deface his light. I can feel what you say, when I look at the cathedral on +the outside; there, indeed, every line sweeps the eye upward--carries it +from one pinnacle to another, each with less and less standing-ground, till +at the summit the building gradually vanishes in a point, and leaves the +spirit to wing its way, unsupported and alone, into the ether. + +"Perhaps," I added, half bitterly, "these cathedrals may be true symbols +of the superstition which created them--on the outside, offering to +enfranchise the soul and raise it up to heaven; but when the dupes had +entered, giving them only a dark prison, and a crushing bondage, which +neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear." + +"You may sneer at them, if you will, Mr. Locke," said Eleanor, in her +severe, abrupt way. "The working classes would have been badly off without +them. They were, in their day, the only democratic institution in the +world; and the only socialist one too. The only chance a poor man had of +rising by his worth, was by coming to the monastery. And bitterly the +working classes felt the want of them, when they fell. Your own Cobbett can +tell you that." + +"Ah," said Lillian, "how different it must have been four hundred years +ago!--how solemn and picturesque those old monks must have looked, gliding +about the aisles!--and how magnificent the choir must have been, before all +the glass and carving, and that beautiful shrine of St. * * * *, blazing +with gold and jewels, were all plundered and defaced by those horrid +Puritans!" + +"Say, reformer-squires," answered Eleanor; "for it was they who did the +thing; only it was found convenient, at the Restoration, to lay on +the people of the seventeenth century the iniquities which the +country-gentlemen committed in the sixteenth." + +"Surely," I added, emboldened by her words, "if the monasteries were what +their admirers say, some method of restoring the good of the old system, +without its evil, ought to be found; and would be found, if it were not--" +I paused, recollecting whose guest I was. + +"If it were not, I suppose," said Eleanor, "for those lazy, overfed, +bigoted hypocrites, the clergy. That, I presume, is the description of them +to which you have been most accustomed. Now, let me ask you one question. +Do you mean to condemn, just now, the Church as it was, or the Church as +it is, or the Church as it ought to be? Radicals have a habit of confusing +those three questions, as they have of confusing other things when it suits +them." + +"Really," I said--for my blood was rising--"I do think that, with the +confessed enormous wealth of the clergy, the cathedral establishments +especially, they might do more for the people." + +"Listen to me a little, Mr. Locke. The laity now-a-days take a pride in +speaking evil of the clergy, never seeing that if they are bad, the laity +have made them so. Why, what do you impute to them? Their worldliness, +their being like the world, like the laity round them--like you, in short? +Improve yourselves, and by so doing, if there is this sad tendency in the +clergy to imitate you, you will mend them; if you do not find that after +all, it is they who will have to mend you. 'As with the people, so with the +priest,' is the everlasting law. When, fifty years ago, all classes were +drunkards, from the statesman to the peasant, the clergy were drunken +also, but not half so bad as the laity. Now the laity are eaten up with +covetousness and ambition; and the clergy are covetous and ambitious, but +not half so bad as the laity. The laity, and you working men especially, +are the dupes of frothy, insincere, official rant, as Mr. Carlyle would +call it, in Parliament, on the hustings, at every debating society and +Chartist meeting; and, therefore, the clergyman's sermons are apt to be +just what people like elsewhere, and what, therefore, they suppose people +will like there." + +"If, then," I answered, "in spite of your opinions, you confess the clergy +to be so bad, why are you so angry with men of our opinions, if we do plot +sometimes a little against the Church?" + +"I do not think you know what my opinions are, Mr. Locke. Did you not hear +me just now praising the monasteries, because they were socialist and +democratic? But why is the badness of the clergy any reason for pulling +down the Church? That is another of the confused irrationalities into which +you all allow yourselves to fall. What do you mean by crying shame on a man +for being a bad clergyman, if a good clergyman is not a good thing? If the +very idea of a clergyman, was abominable, as your Church-destroyers ought +to say, you ought to praise a man for being a bad one, and not acting out +this same abominable idea of priesthood. Your very outcry against the sins +of the clergy, shows that, even in your minds, a dim notion lies somewhere +that a clergyman's vocation is, in itself, a divine, a holy, a beneficent +one." + +"I never looked at it in that light, certainly," said I, somewhat +staggered. + +"Very likely not. One word more, for I may not have another opportunity +of speaking to you as I would on these matters. You working men complain +of the clergy for being bigoted and obscurantist, and hating the cause of +the people. Does not nine-tenths of the blame of that lie at your door? I +took up, the other day, at hazard, one of your favourite liberty-preaching +newspapers; and I saw books advertised in it, whose names no modest woman +should ever behold; doctrines and practices advocated in it from which +all the honesty, the decency, the common human feeling which is left in +the English mind, ought to revolt, and does revolt. You cannot deny it. +Your class has told the world that the cause of liberty, equality, and +fraternity, the cause which the working masses claim as theirs, identifies +itself with blasphemy and indecency, with the tyrannous persecutions of +trades-unions, with robbery, assassinations, vitriol-bottles, and midnight +incendiarism. And then you curse the clergy for taking you at your word! +Whatsoever they do, you attack them. If they believe you, and stand up for +common, morality, and for the truths which they know are all-important to +poor as well as rich, you call them bigots and persecutors; while if they +neglect, in any way, the very Christianity for believing which you insult +them, you turn round and call them hypocrites. Mark my words, Mr. Locke, +till you gain the respect and confidence of the clergy, you will never +rise. The day will come when you will find that the clergy are the only +class who can help you. Ah, you may shake your head. I warn you of it. They +were the only bulwark of the poor against the mediæval tyranny of Rank; +you will find them the only bulwark against the modern tyranny of Mammon." + +I was on the point of entreating her to explain herself further, but at +that critical moment Lillian interposed. + +"Now, stay your prophetic glances into the future; here come Lynedale and +papa." And in a moment, Eleanor's whole manner and countenance altered--the +petulant, wild unrest, the harsh, dictatorial tone vanished; and she +turned to meet her lover, with a look of tender, satisfied devotion, which +transfigured her whole face. It was most strange, the power he had over +her. His presence, even at a distance, seemed to fill her whole being +with rich quiet life. She watched him with folded hands, like a mystic +worshipper, waiting for the afflatus of the spirit; and, suspicious and +angry as I felt towards her, I could not help being drawn to her by this +revelation of depths of strong healthy feeling, of which her usual manner +gave so little sign. + +This conversation thoroughly puzzled me; it showed me that there might be +two sides to the question of the people's cause, as well as to that of +others. It shook a little my faith in the infallibility of my own class, +to hear such severe animadversions on them, from a person who professed +herself as much a disciple of Carlyle as any working man; and who evidently +had no lack either of intellect to comprehend or boldness to speak out his +doctrines; who could praise the old monasteries for being democratic and +socialist, and spoke far more severely of the clergy than I could have +done--because she did not deal merely in trite words of abuse, but showed a +real analytic insight into the causes of their short-coming. + + * * * * * + +That same evening the conversation happened to turn on dress, of which Miss +Staunton spoke scornfully and disparagingly, as mere useless vanity and +frippery--an empty substitute for real beauty of person as well as the +higher beauty of mind. And I, emboldened by the courtesy with which I was +always called on to take my share in everything that was said or done, +ventured to object, humbly enough, to her notions. + +"But is not beauty," I said, "in itself a good and blessed thing, +softening, refining, rejoicing the eyes of all who behold?" (And my eyes, +as I spoke, involuntary rested on Lillian's face--who saw it, and blushed.) +"Surely nothing which helps beauty is to be despised. And, without the +charm of dress, beauty, even that of expression, does not really do itself +justice. How many lovely and lovable faces there are, for instance, +among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which +ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the +beholder--but are now never appreciated, because they have not the same +fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the South +Sea Islands possesses!" + +Lillian said it was so very true--she had really never thought of it +before--and somehow I gained courage to go on. + +"Besides, dress is a sort of sacrament, if I may use the word--a sure sign +of the wearer's character; according as any one is orderly, or modest, or +tasteful, or joyous, or brilliant"--and I glanced again at Lillian--"those +excellences, or the want of them, are sure to show themselves, in the +colours they choose, and the cut of their garments. In the workroom, I and +a friend of mine used often to amuse ourselves over the clothes we were +making, by speculating from them on the sort of people the wearers were to +be; and I fancy we were not often wrong." + +My cousin looked daggers at me, and for a moment I fancied I had committed +a dreadful mistake in mentioning my tailor-life. So I had in his eyes, but +not in those of the really well-bred persons round me. + +"Oh, how very amusing it must have been! I think I shall turn milliner, +Eleanor, for the fun of divining every one's little failings from their +caps and gowns!" + +"Go on, Mr. Locke," said the dean, who had seemed buried in the +"Transactions of the Royal Society." "The fact is novel, and I am more +obliged to any one who gives me that, than if he gave me a bank-note. The +money gets spent and done with; but I cannot spend the fact: it remains for +life as permanent capital, returning interest and compound interest _ad +infinitum_. By-the-by, tell me about those same workshops. I have heard +more about them than I like to believe true." + +And I did tell him all about them; and spoke, my blood rising as I went on, +long and earnestly, perhaps eloquently. Now and then I got abashed, and +tried to stop; and then the dean informed me that I was speaking well and +sensibly, while Lillian entreated me to go on. She had never conceived +such things possible--it was as interesting as a novel, &c., &c.; and Miss +Staunton sat with compressed lips and frowning brow, apparently thinking of +nothing but her book, till I felt quite angry at her apathy--for such it +seemed to me to be. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +MY FALL. + + +And now the last day of our stay at D * * * had arrived, and I had as yet +heard nothing of the prospects of my book; though, indeed, the company +in which I had found myself had driven literary ambition, for the time +being, out of my head, and bewitched me to float down the stream of daily +circumstance, satisfied to snatch the enjoyment of each present moment. +That morning, however, after I had fulfilled my daily task of arranging +and naming objects of natural history, the dean settled himself back in +his arm-chair, and bidding me sit down, evidently meditated a business +conversation. + +He had heard from his publisher, and read his letter to me. "The poems were +on the whole much liked. The most satisfactory method of publishing for all +parties, would be by procuring so many subscribers, each agreeing to take +so many copies. In consideration of the dean's known literary judgment and +great influence, the publisher would, as a private favour, not object to +take the risk of any further expenses." + +So far everything sounded charming. The method was not a very independent +one, but it was the only one; and I should actually have the delight of +having published a volume. But, alas! "he thought that the sale of the book +might be greatly facilitated, if certain passages of a strong political +tendency were omitted. He did not wish personally to object to them as +statements of facts, or to the pictorial vigour with which they were +expressed; but he thought that they were somewhat too strong for the +present state of the public taste; and though he should be the last to +allow any private considerations to influence his weak patronage of rising +talent, yet, considering his present connexion, he should hardly wish to +take on himself the responsibility of publishing such passages, unless with +great modifications." + +"You see," said the good old man, "the opinion of respectable practical +men, who know the world, exactly coincides with mine. I did not like to +tell you that I could not help in the publication of your MSS. in their +present state; but I am sure, from the modesty and gentleness which I have +remarked in you, your readiness to listen to reason, and your pleasing +freedom from all violence or coarseness in expressing your opinions, that +you will not object to so exceedingly reasonable a request, which, after +all, is only for your good. Ah! young man," he went on, in a more feeling +tone than I had yet heard from him, "if you were once embroiled in that +political world, of which you know so little, you would soon be crying like +David, 'Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I flee away and be +at rest!' Do you fancy that you can alter a fallen world? What it is, it +always has been, and will be to the end. Every age has its political and +social nostrums, my dear young man, and fancies them infallible; and +the next generation arises to curse them as failures in practice, and +superstitious in theory, and try some new nostrum of its own." + +I sighed. + +"Ah! you may sigh. But we have each of us to be disenchanted of our dream. +There was a time once when I talked republicanism as loudly as raw youth +ever did--when I had an excuse for it, too; for when I was a boy, I saw the +French Revolution; and it was no wonder if young, enthusiastic brains +were excited by all sorts of wild hopes--'perfectibility of the species,' +'rights of man,' 'universal liberty, equality, and brotherhood.'--My dear +sir, there is nothing new under the sun; all that is stale and trite to +a septuagenarian, who has seen where it all ends. I speak to you freely, +because I am deeply interested in you. I feel that this is the important +question of your life, and that you have talents, the possession of which +is a heavy responsibility. Eschew politics, once and for all, as I have +done. I might have been, I may tell you, a bishop at this moment, if I had +condescended to meddle again in those party questions of which my youthful +experience sickened me. But I knew that I should only weaken my own +influence, as that most noble and excellent man, Dr. Arnold, did, by +interfering in politics. The poet, like the clergyman and the philosopher, +has nothing to do with politics. Let them choose the better part, and it +shall not be taken from them. The world may rave," he continued, waxing +eloquent as he approached his favourite subject--"the world may rave, but +in the study there is quiet. The world may change, Mr. Locke, and will; but +'the earth abideth for ever.' Solomon had seen somewhat of politics, and +social improvement, and so on; and behold, then, as now, 'all was vanity +and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and +that which is wanting cannot be numbered. What profit hath a man of all his +labour which he taketh under the sun? The thing which hath been, it is that +which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun. One generation +passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.' No +wonder that the wisest of men took refuge from such experience, as I have +tried to do, in talking of all herbs, from the cedar of Lebanon to the +hyssop that groweth on the wall! + +"Ah! Mr. Locke," he went on, in a soft melancholy, half-abstracted +tone--"ah! Mr. Locke, I have felt deeply, and you will feel some day, the +truth of Jarno's saying in 'Wilhelm Meister,' when he was wandering alone +in the Alps, with his geological hammer, 'These rocks, at least, tell +me no lies, as men do.' Ay, there is no lie in Nature, no discord in +the revelations of science, in the laws of the universe. Infinite, pure, +unfallen, earth-supporting Titans, fresh as on the morning of creation, +those great laws endure; your only true democrats, too--for nothing is too +great or too small for them to take note of. No tiniest gnat, or speck of +dust, but they feed it, guide it, and preserve it,--Hail and snow, wind and +vapour, fulfilling their Maker's word; and like him, too, hiding themselves +from the wise and prudent, and revealing themselves unto babes. Yes, Mr. +Locke; it is the childlike, simple, patient, reverent heart, which science +at once demands and cultivates. To prejudice or haste, to self-conceit or +ambition, she proudly shuts her treasuries--to open them to men of humble +heart, whom this world thinks simple dreamers--her Newtons, and Owens, +and Faradays. Why should you not become such a man as they? You have the +talents--you have the love for nature, you seem to have the gentle and +patient spirit, which, indeed, will grow up more and more in you, if you +become a real student of science. Or, if you must be a poet, why not sing +of nature, and leave those to sing political squabbles, who have no eye for +the beauty of her repose? How few great poets have been politicians!" + +I gently suggested Milton. + +"Ay! he became a great poet only when he had deserted politics, because +they had deserted him. In blindness and poverty, in the utter failure of +all his national theories, he wrote the works which have made him immortal. +Was Shakespeare a politician? or any one of the great poets who have arisen +during the last thirty years? Have they not all seemed to consider it a +sacred duty to keep themselves, as far as they could, out of party strife?" + +I quoted Southey, Shelley, and Burns, as instances to the contrary; but his +induction was completed already, to his own satisfaction. + +"Poor dear Southey was a great verse-maker, rather than a great poet; and +I always consider that his party-prejudices and party-writing narrowed and +harshened a mind which ought to have been flowing forth freely and lovingly +towards all forms of life. And as for Shelley and Burns, their politics +dictated to them at once the worst portions of their poetry and of their +practice. Shelley, what little I have read of him, only seems himself when +he forgets radicalism for nature; and you would not set Burns' life or +death, either, as a model for imitation in any class. Now, do you know, I +must ask you to leave me a little. I am somewhat fatigued with this long +discussion" (in which, certainly, I had borne no great share); "and I am +sure, that after all I have said, you will see the propriety of acceding to +the publisher's advice. Go and think over it, and let me have your answer +by post time." + +I did go and think over it--too long for my good. If I had acted on the +first impulse, I should have refused, and been safe. These passages were +the very pith and marrow of the poems. They were the very words which I had +felt it my duty, my glory, to utter. I, who had been a working man, who had +experienced all their sorrows and temptations--I, seemed called by every +circumstance of my life to preach their cause, to expose their wrongs--I +to squash my convictions, to stultify my book for the sake of popularity, +money, patronage! And yet--all that involved seeing more of Lillian. They +were only too powerful inducements in themselves, alas! but I believe I +could have resisted them tolerably, if they had not been backed by love. +And so a struggle arose, which the rich reader may think a very fantastic +one, though the poor man will understand it, and surely pardon it +also--seeing that he himself is Man. Could I not, just once in a way, serve +God and Mammon at once?--or rather, not Mammon, but Venus: a worship which +looked to me, and really was in my case, purer than all the Mariolatry in +Popedom. After all, the fall might not be so great as it seemed--perhaps I +was not infallible on these same points. (It is wonderful how humble and +self-denying one becomes when one is afraid of doing one's duty.) Perhaps +the dean might be right. He had been a republican himself once, certainly. +The facts, indeed, which I had stated, there could be no doubt of; but I +might have viewed them through a prejudiced and angry medium. I might have +been not quite logical in my deductions from them--I might.... In short, +between "perhapses" and "mights" I fell--a very deep, real, damnable fall; +and consented to emasculate my poems, and become a flunkey and a dastard. + +I mentioned my consent that evening to the party; the dean purred content +thereat. Eleanor, to my astonishment, just said, sternly and abruptly, + +"Weak!" and then turned away, while Lillian began: + +"Oh! what a pity! And really they were some of the prettiest verses of all! +But of course my father must know best; you are quite right to be guided by +him, and do whatever is proper and prudent. After all, papa, I have got the +naughtiest of them all, you know, safe. Eleanor set it to music, and wrote +it out in her book, and I thought it was so charming that I copied it." + +What Lillian said about herself I drank in as greedily as usual; what she +said about Eleanor fell on a heedless ear, and vanished, not to reappear in +my recollection till--But I must not anticipate. + +So it was all settled pleasantly; and I sat up that evening writing a +bit of verse for Lillian, about the Old Cathedral, and "Heaven-aspiring +towers," and "Aisles of cloistered shade," and all that sort of thing; +which I did not believe or care for; but I thought it would please her, and +so it did; and I got golden smiles and compliments for my first, though not +my last, insincere poem. I was going fast down hill, in my hurry to rise. +However, as I said, it was all pleasant enough. I was to return to town, +and there await the dean's orders; and, most luckily, I had received that +morning from Sandy Mackaye a characteristic letter: + +"Gowk, Telemachus, hearken! Item 1. Ye're fou wi' the Circean cup, aneath +the shade o' shovel hats and steeple houses. + +"Item 2. I, cuif-Mentor that I am, wearing out a gude pair o' gude Scots +brogues that my sister's husband's third cousin sent me a towmond gane fra +Aberdeen, rinning ower the town to a' journals, respectable and ither, +anent the sellin o' your 'Autobiography of an Engine-Boiler in the Vauxhall +Road,' the whilk I ha' disposit o' at the last, to O'Flynn's _Weekly +Warwhoop_; and gin ye ha' ony mair sic trash in your head, you may get your +meal whiles out o' the same kist; unless, as I sair misdoubt, ye're praying +already, like Eli's bairns, 'to be put into ane o' the priest's offices, +that ye may eat a piece o' bread.' + +"Yell be coming the-morrow? I'm lane without ye; though I look for ye +surely to come ben wi' a gowd shoulder-note, and a red nose." + +This letter, though it hit me hard, and made me, I confess, a little +angry at the moment with my truest friend, still offered me a means of +subsistence, and enabled me to decline safely the pecuniary aid which I +dreaded the dean's offering me. And yet I felt dispirited and ill at ease. +My conscience would not let me enjoy the success I felt I had attained. But +next morning I saw Lillian; and I forgot books, people's cause, conscience, +and everything. + + * * * * * + +I went home by coach--a luxury on which my cousin insisted--as he did on +lending me the fare; so that in all I owed him somewhat more than eleven +pounds. But I was too happy to care for a fresh debt, and home I went, +considering my fortune made. + +My heart fell, as I stepped into the dingy little old shop! Was it the +meanness of the place after the comfort and elegance of my late abode? +Was it disappointment at not finding Mackaye at home? Or was it that +black-edged letter which lay waiting for me on the table? I was afraid to +open it; I knew not why. I turned it over and over several times, trying +to guess whose the handwriting on the cover might be; the postmark was two +days old; and at last I broke the seal. + + "Sir,--This is to inform you that your mother, Mrs. Locke, died this + morning, a sensible sinner, not without assurance of her election: and + that her funeral is fixed for Wednesday, the 29th instant. + + "The humble servant of the Lord's people, + + "J. WIGGINTON." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +SHORT AND SAD. + + +I shall pass over the agonies of the next few days. There is +self-exenteration enough and to spare in my story, without dilating on +them. They are too sacred to publish, and too painful, alas! even to +recall. I write my story, too, as a working man. Of those emotions which +are common to humanity, I shall say but little--except when it is necessary +to prove that the working man has feelings like the rest of his kind, +But those feelings may, in this case, be supplied by the reader's own +imagination. Let him represent them to himself as bitter, as remorseful as +he will, he will not equal the reality. True, she had cast me off; but had +I not rejoiced in that rejection which should have been my shame? True, I +had fed on the hope of some day winning reconciliation, by winning fame; +but before the fame had arrived, the reconciliation had become impossible. +I had shrunk from going back to her, as I ought to have done, in filial +humility, and, therefore, I was not allowed to go back to her in the pride +of success. Heaven knows, I had not forgotten her. Night and day I had +thought of her with prayers and blessings; but I had made a merit of my own +love to her--my forgiveness of her, as I dared to call it. I had pampered +my conceit with a notion that I was a martyr in the cause of genius and +enlightenment. How hollow, windy, heartless, all that looked now. There! I +will say no more. Heaven preserve any who read these pages from such days +and nights as I dragged on till that funeral, and for weeks after it was +over, when I had sat once more in the little old chapel, with all the +memories of my childhood crowding up, and tantalizing me with the vision +of their simple peace--never, never, to return! I heard my mother's dying +pangs, her prayers, her doubts, her agonies, for my reprobate soul, +dissected for the public good by my old enemy, Mr. Wigginton, who dragged +in among his fulsome eulogies of my mother's "signs of grace," rejoicings +that there were "babes span-long in hell." I saw my sister Susan, now a +tall handsome woman, but become all rigid, sour, with coarse grim lips, and +that crushed, self-conscious, reserved, almost dishonest look about the +eyes, common to fanatics of every creed. I heard her cold farewell, as she +put into my hands certain notes and diaries of my mother's, which she had +bequeathed to me on her death-bed. I heard myself proclaimed inheritor of +some small matters of furniture, which had belonged to her; told Susan +carelessly to keep them for herself; and went forth, fancying that the +curse of Cain was on my brow. + +I took home the diary; but several days elapsed before I had courage to +open it. Let the words I read there be as secret as the misery which +dictated them. I had broken my mother's heart!--no! I had not!--The +infernal superstition which taught her to fancy that Heaven's love was +narrower than her own--that God could hate his creature, not for its sins, +but for the very nature which he had given it--that, that had killed her. + +And I remarked too, with a gleam of hope, that in several places where +sunshine seemed ready to break through the black cloud of fanatic +gloom--where she seemed inclined not merely to melt towards me (for there +was, in every page, an under-current of love deeper than death, and +stronger than the grave), but also to dare to trust God on my behalf--whole +lines carefully erased page after page torn out, evidently long after the +MSS. were written. I believe, to this day, that either my poor sister or +her father-confessor was the perpetrator of that act. The _fraus pia_ is +not yet extinct; and it is as inconvenient now as it was in popish times, +to tell the whole truth about saints, when they dare to say or do things +which will not quite fit into the formulæ of their sect. + +But what was to become of Susan? Though my uncle continued to her +the allowance which he had made to my mother, yet I was her natural +protector--and she was my only tie upon earth. Was I to lose her, too? +Might we not, after all, be happy together, in some little hole in Chelsea, +like Elia and his Bridget? That question was solved for me. She declined +my offers; saying, that she could not live with any one whose religious +opinions differed from her own, and that she had already engaged a room at +the house of a Christian friend; and was shortly to be united to that dear +man of God, Mr. Wigginton, who was to be removed to the work of the Lord in +Manchester. + +I knew the scoundrel, but it would have been impossible for me to undeceive +her. Perhaps he was only a scoundrel--perhaps he would not ill-treat her. +And yet--my own little Susan! my play-fellow! my only tie on earth!--to +lose her--and not only her, but her respect, her love!--And my spirit, deep +enough already, sank deeper still into sadness; and I felt myself alone on +earth, and clung to Mackaye as to a father--and a father indeed that old +man was to me. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +PEGASUS IN HARNESS. + + +But, in sorrow or in joy, I had to earn my bread; and so, too, had +Crossthwaite, poor fellow! How he contrived to feed himself and his little +Katie for the next few years is more than I can tell; at all events he +worked hard enough. He scribbled, agitated, ran from London to Manchester, +and Manchester to Bradford, spouting, lecturing--sowing the east wind, I am +afraid, and little more. Whose fault was it? What could such a man do, with +that fervid tongue, and heart, and brain of his, in such a station as his, +such a time as this? Society had helped to make him an agitator. Society +has had, more or less, to take the consequences of her own handiwork. For +Crossthwaite did not speak without hearers. He could make the fierce, +shrewd, artisan nature flash out into fire--not always celestial, nor +always, either, infernal. So he agitated and lived--how, I know not. That +he did do so, is evident from the fact that he and Katie are at this moment +playing chess in the cabin, before my eyes, and making love, all the while, +as if they had not been married a week.... Ah, well! + +I, however, had to do more than get my bread; I had to pay off these +fearful eleven pounds odd, which, now that all the excitement of my stay at +D * * * had been so sadly quenched, lay like lead upon my memory. My list +of subscribers filled slowly, and I had no power of increasing it by any +canvassings of my own. My uncle, indeed, had promised to take two copies, +and my cousin one; not wishing, of course, to be so uncommercial as to run +any risk, before they had seen whether my poems would succeed. But, with +those exceptions, the dean had it all his own way; and he could not be +expected to forego his own literary labours for my sake; so, through all +that glaring summer, and sad foggy autumn, and nipping winter, I had to +get my bread as I best could--by my pen. Mackaye grumbled at my writing +so much, and so fast, and sneered about the _furor scribendi_. But it +was hardly fair upon me. "My mouth craved it of me," as Solomon says. +I had really no other means of livelihood. Even if I could have gotten +employment as a tailor, in the honourable trade, I loathed the business +utterly--perhaps, alas! to confess the truth, I was beginning to despise +it. I could bear to think of myself as a poor genius, in connection with my +new wealthy and high-bred patrons; for there was precedent for the thing. +Penniless bards and squires of low degree, low-born artists, ennobled by +their pictures--there was something grand in the notion of mind triumphant +over the inequalities of rank, and associating with the great and wealthy +as their spiritual equal, on the mere footing of its own innate nobility; +no matter to what den it might return, to convert it into a temple of the +Muses, by the glorious creations of its fancy, &c., &c. But to go back +daily from the drawing-room and the publisher's to the goose and the +shopboard, was too much for my weakness, even if it had been physically +possible, as, thank Heaven, it was not. + +So I became a hack-writer, and sorrowfully, but deliberately, "put my +Pegasus into heavy harness," as my betters had done before me. It was +miserable work, there is no denying it--only not worse than tailoring. +To try and serve God and Mammon too; to make miserable compromises daily +between the two great incompatibilities, what was true, and what would +pay; to speak my mind, in fear and trembling, by hints, and halves, and +quarters; to be daily hauling poor Truth just up to the top of the well, +and then, frightened at my own success, let her plump down again to the +bottom; to sit there trying to teach others, while my mind was in a whirl +of doubt; to feed others' intellects while my own were hungering; to grind +on in the Philistine's mill, or occasionally make sport for them, like some +weary-hearted clown grinning in a pantomime in a "light article," as blind +as Samson, but not, alas! as strong, for indeed my Delilah of the West-end +had clipped my locks, and there seemed little chance of their growing +again. That face and that drawing-room flitted before me from morning till +eve, and enervated and distracted my already over-wearied brain. + +I had no time, besides, to concentrate my thoughts sufficiently for poetry; +no time to wait for inspiration. From the moment I had swallowed my +breakfast, I had to sit scribbling off my thoughts anyhow in prose; and +soon my own scanty stock was exhausted, and I was forced to beg, borrow, +and steal notions and facts wherever I could get them. Oh! the misery of +having to read not what I longed to know, but what I thought would pay! +to skip page after page of interesting matter, just to pick out a single +thought or sentence which could be stitched into my patchwork! and then +the still greater misery of seeing the article which I had sent to press +a tolerably healthy and lusty bantling, appear in print next week after +suffering the inquisition tortures of the editorial censorship, all maimed, +and squinting, and one-sided, with the colour rubbed off its poor cheeks, +and generally a villanous hang-dog look of ferocity, so different from its +birth-smile that I often did not know my own child again!--and then, when I +dared to remonstrate, however feebly, to be told, by way of comfort, that +the public taste must be consulted! It gave me a hopeful notion of the said +taste, certainly; and often and often I groaned in spirit over the temper +of my own class, which not only submitted to, but demanded such one-sided +bigotry, prurience, and ferocity, from those who set up as its guides and +teachers. + +Mr. O'Flynn, editor of the _Weekly Warwhoop_, whose white slave I now found +myself, was, I am afraid, a pretty faithful specimen of that class, as it +existed before the bitter lesson of the 10th of April brought the Chartist +working men and the Chartist press to their senses. Thereon sprang up a +new race of papers, whose moral tone, whatever may be thought of their +political or doctrinal opinions, was certainly not inferior to that of the +Whig and Tory press. The _Commonwealth_, the _Standard of Freedom_, the +_Plain Speaker_, were reprobates, if to be a Chartist is to be a reprobate: +but none except the most one-sided bigots could deny them the praise of +a stern morality and a lofty earnestness, a hatred of evil and a craving +after good, which would often put to shame many a paper among the oracles +of Belgravia and Exeter Hall. But those were the days of lubricity and +O'Flynn. Not that the man was an unredeemed scoundrel. He was no more +profligate, either in his literary or his private morals, than many a man +who earns his hundreds, sometimes his thousands, a year, by prophesying +smooth things to Mammon, crying in daily leaders "Peace! peace!" when +there is no peace, and daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and +self-satisfied covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics +and garbled foreign news--till "the storm shall fall, and the breaking +thereof cometh suddenly in an instant." Let those of the respectable press +who are without sin, cast the first stone at the unrespectable. Many of +the latter class, who have been branded as traitors and villains, were +single-minded, earnest, valiant men; and, as for even O'Flynn, and those +worse than him, what was really the matter with them was, that they were +too honest--they spoke out too much of their whole minds. Bewildered, like +Lear, amid the social storm, they had determined, like him, to become +"unsophisticated," "to owe the worm no silk, the cat no perfume"--seeing, +indeed, that if they had, they could not have paid for them; so they tore +off, of their own will, the peacock's feathers of gentility, the sheep's +clothing of moderation, even the fig-leaves of decent reticence, and became +just what they really were--just what hundreds more would become, who +now sit in the high places of the earth, if it paid them as well to +be unrespectable as it does to be respectable; if the selfishness and +covetousness, bigotry and ferocity, which are in them, and more or less in +every man, had happened to enlist them against existing evils, instead of +for them. O'Flynn would have been gladly as respectable as they; but, in +the first place, he must have starved; and in the second place, he must +have lied; for he believed in his own radicalism with his whole soul. There +was a ribald sincerity, a frantic courage in the man. He always spoke the +truth when it suited him, and very often when it did not. He did see, which +is more than all do, that oppression is oppression, and humbug, humbug. +He had faced the gallows before now without flinching. He had spouted +rebellion in the Birmingham Bullring, and elsewhere, and taken the +consequences like a man; while his colleagues left their dupes to the +tender mercies of broadswords and bayonets, and decamped in the disguise +of sailors, old women, and dissenting preachers. He had sat three months +in Lancaster Castle, the Bastille of England, one day perhaps to fall like +that Parisian one, for a libel which he never wrote, because he would +not betray his cowardly contributor. He had twice pleaded his own cause, +without help of attorney, and showed himself as practised in every +law-quibble and practical cheat as if he had been a regularly ordained +priest of the blue-bag; and each time, when hunted at last into a corner, +had turned valiantly to bay, with wild witty Irish eloquence, "worthy," as +the press say of poor misguided Mitchell, "of a better cause." Altogether, +a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided, ready to do and suffer +anything fair or foul, for what he honestly believed--if a confused, +virulent positiveness be worthy of the name "belief"--to be the true and +righteous cause. + +Those who class all mankind compendiously and comfortably under the two +exhaustive species of saints and villains, may consider such a description +garbled and impossible. I have seen few men, but never yet met I among +those few either perfect saint or perfect villain. I draw men as I have +found them--inconsistent, piece-meal, better than their own actions, +worse than their own opinions, and poor O'Flynn among the rest. Not that +there were no questionable spots in the sun of his fair fame. It was +whispered that he had in old times done dirty work for Dublin Castle +bureaucrats--nay, that he had even, in a very hard season, written court +poetry for the _Morning Post_; but all these little peccadilloes he +carefully veiled in that kindly mist which hung over his youthful years. +He had been a medical student, and got plucked, his foes declared, in his +examination. He had set up a savings-bank, which broke. He had come over +from Ireland, to agitate for "repale" and "rint," and, like a wise man as +he was, had never gone back again. He had set up three or four papers in +his time, and entered into partnership with every leading democrat in turn; +but his papers failed, and he quarrelled with his partners, being addicted +to profane swearing and personalities. And now, at last, after Ulyssean +wanderings, he had found rest in the office of the _Weekly Warwhoop_, if +rest it could be called, that perennial hurricane of plotting, railing, +sneering, and bombast, in which he lived, never writing a line, on +principle, till he had worked himself up into a passion. + +I will dwell no more on so distasteful a subject. Such leaders, let us +hope, belong only to the past--to the youthful self-will and licentiousness +of democracy; and as for reviling O'Flynn, or any other of his class, no +man has less right than myself, I fear, to cast stones at such as they. +I fell as low as almost any, beneath the besetting sins of my class; and +shall I take merit to myself, because God has shown me, a little earlier +perhaps than to them, somewhat more of the true duties and destinies of The +Many? Oh, that they could see the depths of my affection to them! Oh, that +they could see the shame and self-abasement with which, in rebuking their +sins, I confess my own! If they are apt to be flippant and bitter, so was +I. If they lust to destroy, without knowing what to build up instead, so +did I. If they make an almighty idol of that Electoral Reform, which ought +to be, and can be, only a preliminary means, and expect final deliverance +from "their twenty-thousandth part of a talker in the national palaver," +so did I. Unhealthy and noisome as was the literary atmosphere in which I +now found myself, it was one to my taste. The very contrast between the +peaceful, intellectual luxury which I had just witnessed, and the misery of +my class and myself, quickened my delight in it. In bitterness, in sheer +envy, I threw my whole soul into it, and spoke evil, and rejoiced in evil. +It was so easy to find fault! It pampered my own self-conceit, my own +discontent, while it saved me the trouble of inventing remedies. Yes; it +was indeed easy to find fault. "The world was all before me, where to +choose." In such a disorganized, anomalous, grumbling, party-embittered +element as this English society, and its twin pauperism and luxury, I had +but to look straight before me to see my prey. + +And thus I became daily more and more cynical, fierce, reckless. My mouth +was filled with cursing--and too often justly. And all the while, like +tens of thousands of my class, I had no man to teach me. Sheep scattered +on the hills, we were, that had no shepherd. What wonder if our bones lay +bleaching among rocks and quagmires, and wolves devoured the heritage of +God? + +Mackaye had nothing positive, after all, to advise or propound. His wisdom +was one of apophthegms and maxims, utterly impracticable, too often merely +negative, as was his creed, which, though he refused to be classed with any +sect, was really a somewhat undefined Unitarianism--or rather Islamism. He +could say, with the old Moslem, "God is great--who hath resisted his will?" +And he believed what he said, and lived manful and pure, reverent and +self-denying, by that belief, as the first Moslem did. But that was not +enough. + + "Not enough? Merely negative?" + +No--_that_ was positive enough, and mighty; but I repeat it, it was not +enough. He felt it so himself; for he grew daily more and more cynical, +more and more hopeless about the prospects of his class and of all +humanity. Why not? Poor suffering wretches! what is it to them to know that +"God is great," unless you can prove to them God is also merciful? Did he +indeed care for men at all?--was what I longed to know; was all this misery +and misrule around us his will--his stern and necessary law--his lazy +connivance? And were we to free ourselves from it by any frantic means that +came to hand? or had he ever interfered himself? Was there a chance, a +hope, of his interfering now, in our own time, to take the matter into his +own hand, and come out of his place to judge the earth in righteousness? +That was what we wanted to know; and poor Mackaye could give no comfort +there. "God was great--the wicked would be turned into hell." Ay--the few +wilful, triumphant wicked; but the millions of suffering, starving wicked, +the victims of society and circumstance--what hope for them? "God was +great." And for the clergy, our professed and salaried teachers, all I can +say is--and there are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of workmen who +can re-echo my words--with the exception of the dean and my cousin, and one +who shall be mentioned hereafter, a clergyman never spoke to me in my life. + +Why should he? Was I not a Chartist and an Infidel? The truth is, the +clergy are afraid of us. To read the _Dispatch_, is to be excommunicated. +Young men's classes? Honour to them, however few they are--however hampered +by the restrictions of religious bigotry and political cowardice. But the +working men, whether rightly or wrongly, do not trust them; they do not +trust the clergy who set them on foot; they do not expect to be taught at +them the things they long to know--to be taught the whole truth in them +about history, politics, science, the Bible. They suspect them to be mere +tubs to the whale--mere substitutes for education, slowly and late adopted, +in order to stop the mouths of the importunate. They may misjudge the +clergy; but whose fault is it if they do? Clergymen of England!--look at +the history of your Establishment for the last fifty years, and say, what +wonder is it if the artisan mistrust you? Every spiritual reform, since the +time of John Wesley, has had to establish itself in the teeth of insult, +calumny, and persecution. Every ecclesiastical reform comes not from +within, but from without your body. Mr. Horsman, struggling against every +kind of temporizing and trickery, has to do the work which bishops, by +virtue of their seat in the House of Lords, ought to have been doing years +ago. Everywhere we see the clergy, with a few persecuted exceptions (like +Dr. Arnold), proclaiming themselves the advocates of Toryism, the dogged +opponents of our political liberty, living either by the accursed system of +pew-rents, or else by one which depends on the high price of corn; chosen +exclusively from the classes who crush us down; prohibiting all free +discussion on religious points; commanding us to swallow down, with faith +as passive and implicit as that of a Papist, the very creeds from which +their own bad example, and their scandalous neglect, have, in the last +three generations, alienated us; never mixing with the thoughtful working +men, except in the prison, the hospital, or in extreme old age; betraying, +in every tract, in every sermon, an ignorance of the doubts, the feelings, +the very language of the masses, which would be ludicrous, were it not +accursed before God and man. And then will you show us a few tardy +improvements here and there, and ask us, indignantly, why we distrust you? +Oh! gentlemen, if you cannot see for yourselves the causes of our distrust, +it is past our power to show you. We must leave it to God. + + * * * * * + +But to return to my own story. I had, as I said before, to live by my pen; +and in that painful, confused, maimed way, I contrived to scramble on the +long winter through, writing regularly for the _Weekly Warwhoop_, and +sometimes getting an occasional scrap into some other cheap periodical, +often on the very verge of starvation, and glad of a handful of meal from +Sandy's widow's barrel. If I had had more than my share of feasting in the +summer, I made the balance even, during those frosty months, by many a +bitter fast. + +And here let me ask you, gentle reader, who are just now considering me +ungentle, virulent, and noisy, did you ever, for one day in your whole +life, literally, involuntarily, and in spite of all your endeavours, +longings, and hungerings, _not get enough to eat_? If you ever have, it +must have taught you several things. + +But all this while, it must not be supposed that I had forgotten my +promise to good Farmer Porter, to look for his missing son. And, indeed, +Crossthwaite and I were already engaged in a similar search for a friend +of his--the young tailor, who, as I told Porter, had been lost for +several months. He was the brother of Crossthwaite's wife, a passionate, +kind-hearted Irishman, Mike Kelly by name, reckless and scatter-brained +enough to get himself into every possible scrape, and weak enough of will +never to get himself out of one. For these two, Crossthwaite and I had +searched from one sweater's den to another, and searched in vain. And +though the present interest and exertion kept us both from brooding over +our own difficulties, yet in the long run it tended only to embitter and +infuriate our minds. The frightful scenes of hopeless misery which we +witnessed--the ever widening pit of pauperism and slavery, gaping for fresh +victims day by day, as they dropped out of the fast lessening "honourable +trade," into the ever-increasing miseries of sweating, piece-work, and +starvation prices; the horrible certainty that the same process which was +devouring our trade was slowly, but surely, eating up every other also; +the knowledge that there was no remedy, no salvation for us in man, that +political economists had declared such to be the law and constitution of +society, and that our rulers had believed that message, and were determined +to act upon it;--if all these things did not go far towards maddening us, +we must have been made of sterner stuff than any one who reads this book. + +At last, about the middle of January, just as we had given up the search +as hopeless, and poor Katie's eyes were getting red and swelled with daily +weeping, a fresh spur was given to our exertions, by the sudden appearance +of no less a person than the farmer himself. What ensued upon his coming +must be kept for another chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +THE SWEATER'S DEN. + + +I was greedily devouring Lane's "Arabian Nights," which had made their +first appearance in the shop that day. + +Mackaye sat in his usual place, smoking a clean pipe, and assisting his +meditations by certain mysterious chironomic signs; while opposite to him +was Farmer Porter--a stone or two thinner than when I had seen him last, +but one stone is not much missed out of seventeen. His forehead looked +smaller, and his jaws larger than ever, and his red face was sad, and +furrowed with care. + +Evidently, too, he was ill at ease about other matters besides his son. He +was looking out of the corners of his eyes, first at the skinless cast on +the chimney-piece, then at the crucified books hanging over his head, as +if he considered them not altogether safe companions, and rather expected +something "uncanny" to lay hold of him from behind--a process which +involved the most horrible contortions of visage, as he carefully abstained +from stirring a muscle of his neck or body, but sat bolt upright, his +elbows pinned to his sides, and his knees as close together as his stomach +would permit, like a huge corpulent Egyptian Memnon--the most ludicrous +contrast to the little old man opposite, twisted up together in his +Joseph's coat, like some wizard magician in the stories which I was +reading. A curious pair of "poles" the two made; the mesothet whereof, by +no means a _"punctum indifferens,"_ but a true connecting spiritual idea, +stood on the table--in the whisky-bottle. + +Farmer Porter was evidently big with some great thought, and had all a true +poet's bashfulness about publishing the fruit of his creative genius. He +looked round again at the skinless man, the caricatures, the books; and, +as his eye wandered from pile to pile, and shelf to shelf, his face +brightened, and he seemed to gain courage. + +Solemnly he put his hat on his knees, and began solemnly brushing it with +his cuff. Then he saw me watching him, and stopped. Then he put his pipe +solemnly on the hob, and cleared his throat for action, while I buried my +face in the book. + +"Them's a sight o' larned beuks, Muster Mackaye?" + +"Humph!" + +"Yow maun ha' got a deal o' scholarship among they, noo?" + +"Humph!" + +"Dee yow think, noo, yow could find out my boy out of un, by any ways o' +conjuring like?" + +"By what?" + +"Conjuring--to strike a perpendicular, noo, or say the Lord's Prayer +backwards?" + +"Wadna ye prefer a meeracle or twa?" asked Sandy, after a long pull at the +whisky-toddy. + +"Or a few efreets?" added I. + +"Whatsoever you likes, gentlemen. You're best judges, to be sure," answered +Farmer Porter, in an awed and helpless voice. + +"Aweel--I'm no that disinclined to believe in the occult sciences. I dinna +haud a'thegither wi' Salverte. There was mair in them than Magia naturalis, +I'm thinking. Mesmerism and magic-lanterns, benj and opium, winna explain +all facts, Alton, laddie. Dootless they were an unco' barbaric an' empiric +method o' expressing the gran' truth o' man's mastery ower matter. But the +interpenetration o' the spiritual an' physical worlds is a gran' truth too; +an' aiblins the Deity might ha' allowed witchcraft, just to teach that +to puir barbarous folk--signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe +in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks +might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal +times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor +coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this. +Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes--but no +that o' stolen tailors." + +Farmer Porter had listened to this harangue, with mouth and eyes gradually +expanding between awe and the desire to comprehend; but at the last +sentence his countenance fell. + +"So I'm thinking, Mister Porter, that the best witch in siccan a case is +ane that ye may find at the police-office." + +"Anan?" + +"Thae detective police are gran' necromancers an' canny in their way: an' I +just took the liberty, a week agone, to ha' a crack wi' ane o' 'em. An noo, +gin ye're inclined, we'll leave the whusky awhile, an' gang up to that cave +o' Trophawnius, ca'd by the vulgar Bow-street, an' speir for tidings o' the +twa lost sheep." + +So to Bow-street we went, and found our man, to whom the farmer bowed with +obsequiousness most unlike his usual burly independence. He evidently half +suspected him to have dealings with the world of spirits: but whether he +had such or not, they had been utterly unsuccessful; and we walked back +again, with the farmer between us, half-blubbering-- + +"I tell ye, there's nothing like ganging to a wise 'ooman. Bless ye, I mind +one up to Guy Hall, when I was a barn, that two Irish reapers coom down, +and murthered her for the money--and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so +sure as the church--and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains +coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it--and when my vather's cows +was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together +at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got +nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil +carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both a-hanging in +chains by Wisbeach river, with my own eyes. So when they Irish reapers +comes into the vens, our chaps always says, 'Yow goo to Guy Hall, there's +yor brithren a-waitin' for yow,' and that do make um joost mad loike, it +do. I tell ye there's nowt like a wise 'ooman, for vinding out the likes o' +this." + +At this hopeful stage of the argument I left them to go to the Magazine +office. As I passed through Covent Garden, a pretty young woman stopped me +under a gas-lamp. I was pushing on when I saw it was Jemmy Downes's Irish +wife, and saw, too, that she did not recognise me. A sudden instinct made +me stop and hear what she had to say. + +"Shure, thin, and ye're a tailor, my young man?" + +"Yes," I said, nettled a little that my late loathed profession still +betrayed itself in my gait. + +"From the counthry?" + +I nodded, though I dared not speak a white lie to that effect. I fancied +that, somehow, through her I might hear of poor Kelly and his friend +Porter. + +"Ye'll be wanting work, thin?" + +"I have no work." + +"Och, thin, it's I can show ye the flower o' work, I can. Bedad, there's a +shop I know of where ye'll earn--bedad, if ye're the ninth part of a man, +let alone a handy young fellow like the looks of you--och, ye'll earn +thirty shillings the week, to the very least--an' beautiful lodgings; +och, thin, just come and see 'em--as chape as mother's milk! Gome along, +thin--och, it's the beauty ye are--just the nate figure for a tailor." + +The fancy still possessed me; and I went with her through one dingy back +street after another. She seemed to be purposely taking an indirect road, +to mislead me as to my whereabouts; but after a half-hour's walking, +I knew, as well as she, that we were in one of the most miserable +slop-working nests of the East-end. + +She stopped at a house door, and hurried me in, up to the first floor, +and into a dirty, slatternly parlour, smelling infamously of gin; where +the first object I beheld was Jemmy Downes, sitting before the fire, +three-parts drunk, with a couple of dirty, squalling children on the +hearthrug, whom he was kicking and cuffing alternately. + +"Och, thin, ye villain, beating the poor darlints whinever I lave ye a +minute." And pouring out a volley of Irish curses, she caught up the +urchins, one under each arm, and kissed and hugged them till they were +nearly choked. "Och, ye plague o' my life--as drunk as a baste; an' I +brought home this darlint of a young gentleman to help ye in the business." + +Downes got up, and steadying himself by the table, leered at me with +lacklustre eyes, and attempted a little ceremonious politeness. How this +was to end I did not see; but I was determined to carry it through, on the +chance of success, infinitely small as that might be. + +"An' I've told him thirty shillings a week's the least he'll earn; and +charge for board and lodgings only seven shillings." + +"Thirty!--she lies; she's always a lying; don't you mind her. +Five-and-forty is the werry lowest figure. Ask my respectable and most +piousest partner, Shemei Solomons. Why, blow me--it's Locke!" + +"Yes, it is Locke; and surely you're my old friend Jemmy Downes? Shake +hands. What an unexpected pleasure to meet you again!" + +"Werry unexpected pleasure. Tip us your daddle! Delighted--delighted, as I +was a saying, to be of the least use to yer. Take a caulker? Summat heavy, +then? No? 'Tak' a drap o' kindness yet, for auld langsyne?" + +"You forget I was always a teetotaller." + +"Ay," with a look of unfeigned pity. "An' you're a going to lend us a hand? +Oh, ah! perhaps you'd like to begin? Here's a most beautiful uniform, +now, for a markis in her Majesty's Guards; we don't mention names--tarn't +businesslike. P'r'aps you'd like best to work here to-night, for +company--'for auld langsyne, my boys;' and I'll introduce yer to the gents +up-stairs to-morrow." + +"No," I said; "I'll go up at once, if you've no objection." + +"Och, thin, but the sheets isn't aired--no--faix; and I'm thinking the +gentleman as is a going isn't gone yet." + +But I insisted on going up at once; and, grumbling, she followed me. I +stopped on the landing of the second floor, and asked which way; and seeing +her in no hurry to answer, opened a door, inside which I heard the hum +of many voices, saying in as sprightly a tone as I could muster, that I +supposed that was the workroom. + +As I had expected, a fetid, choking den, with just room enough in it for +the seven or eight sallow, starved beings, who, coatless, shoeless, and +ragged, sat stitching, each on his truckle-bed. I glanced round; the man +whom I sought was not there. + +My heart fell; why it had ever risen to such a pitch of hope I cannot tell; +and half-cursing myself for a fool, in thus wildly thrusting my head into a +squabble, I turned back and shut the door, saying-- + +"A very pleasant room, ma'am, but a leetle too crowded." + +Before she could answer, the opposite door opened; and a face +appeared--unwashed, unshaven, shrunken to a skeleton. I did not recognise +it at first. + +"Blessed Vargen! but that wasn't your voice, Locke?" + +"And who are you?" + +"Tear and ages! and he don't know Mike Kelly!" + +My first impulse was to catch him up in my arms, and run down-stairs with +him. I controlled myself, however, not knowing how far he might be in his +tyrant's power. But his voluble Irish heart burst out at once-- + +"Oh! blessed saints, take me out o' this! take me out for the love of +Jesus! take me out o' this hell, or I'll go mad intirely! Och! will nobody +have pity on poor sowls in purgatory--here in prison like negur slaves? +We're starved to the bone, we are, and kilt intirely with cowld." + +And as he clutched my arm, with his long, skinny, trembling fingers, I +saw that his hands and feet were all chapped and bleeding. Neither shoe +nor stocking did he possess; his only garments were a ragged shirt and +trousers; and--and, and in horrible mockery of his own misery, a grand +new flowered satin vest, which to-morrow was to figure in some gorgeous +shop-window! + +"Och! Mother of Heaven!" he went on, wildly, "when will I get out to the +fresh air? For five months I haven't seen the blessed light of sun, nor +spoken to the praste, nor ate a bit o' mate, barring bread-and-butter. +Shure, it's all the blessed Sabbaths and saints' days I've been a working +like a haythen Jew, an niver seen the insides o' the chapel to confess my +sins, and me poor sowl's lost intirely--and they've pawned the relaver +[Footnote: A coat, we understand, which is kept by the coatless wretches in +these sweaters' dungeons, to be used by each of them in turn when they want +to go out.--EDITOR.] this fifteen weeks, and not a boy of us iver sot foot +in the street since." + +"Vot's that row?" roared at this juncture Downes's voice from below. + +"Och, thin," shrieked the woman, "here's that thief o' the warld, Micky +Kelly, slandhering o' us afore the blessed heaven, and he owing £2. 14s. +1/2d. for his board an' lodging, let alone pawn-tickets, and goin' to +rin away, the black-hearted ongrateful sarpent!" And she began yelling +indiscriminately, "Thieves!" "Murder!" "Blasphemy!" and such other +ejaculations, which (the English ones at least) had not the slightest +reference to the matter in hand. + +"I'll come to him!" said Downes, with an oath, and rushed stumbling up +the stairs, while the poor wretch sneaked in again, and slammed the door +to. Downes battered at it, but was met with a volley of curses from the +men inside; while, profiting by the Babel, I blew out the light, ran +down-stairs, and got safe into the street. + +In two hours afterwards, Mackaye, Porter, Crossthwaite, and I were at the +door, accompanied by a policeman, and a search-warrant. Porter had insisted +on accompanying us. He had made up his mind that his son was at Downes's; +and all representations of the smallness of his chance were fruitless. He +worked himself up into a state of complete frenzy, and flourished a huge +stick in a way which shocked the policeman's orderly and legal notions. + +"That may do very well down in your country, sir; but you arn't a goin' to +use that there weapon here, you know, not by no hact o' Parliament as I +knows on." + +"Ow, it's joost a way I ha' wi' me." And the stick was quiet for fifty +yards or so, and then recommenced smashing imaginary skulls. + +"You'll do somebody a mischief, sir, with that. You'd much better a lend it +me." + +Porter tucked it under his arm for fifty yards more; and so on, till we +reached Downes's house. + +The policeman knocked: and the door was opened, cautiously, by an old Jew, +of a most un-"Caucasian" cast of features, however "high-nosed," as Mr. +Disraeli has it. + +The policeman asked to see Michael Kelly. + +"Michaelsh? I do't know such namesh--" But before the parley could go +farther, the farmer burst past policeman and Jew, and rushed into the +passage, roaring, in a voice which made the very windows rattle, + +"Billy Poorter! Billy Poorter! whor be yow? whor be yow?" + +We all followed him up-stairs, in time to see him charging valiantly, +with his stick for a bayonet, the small person of a Jew-boy, who stood +at the head of the stairs in a scientific attitude. The young rascal +planted a dozen blows in the huge carcase--he might as well have thumped +the rhinoceros in the Regent's Park; the old man ran right over him, +without stopping, and dashed up the stairs; at the head of which--oh, +joy!--appeared a long, shrunken, red-haired figure, the tears on its dirty +cheeks glittering in the candle-glare. In an instant father and son were in +each other's arms. + +"Oh, my barn! my barn! my barn! my barn!" And then the old Hercules held +him off at arm's length, and looked at him with a wistful face, and hugged +him again with "My barn! my barn!" He had nothing else to say. Was it not +enough? And poor Kelly danced frantically around them, hurrahing; his own +sorrows forgotten in his friend's deliverance. + +The Jew-boy shook himself, turned, and darted down stairs past us; the +policeman quietly put out his foot, tripped him headlong, and jumping down +after him, extracted from his grasp a heavy pocket-book. + +"Ah! my dear mothersh's dying gift! Oh, dear! oh dear! give it back to a +poor orphansh!" + +"Didn't I see you take it out o' the old un's pocket, you young villain?" +answered the maintainer of order, as he shoved the book into his bosom, and +stood with one foot on his writhing victim, a complete nineteenth-century +St. Michael. + +"Let me hold him," I said, "while you go up-stairs." + +"_You_ hold a Jew-boy!--you hold a mad cat!" answered the policeman, +contemptuously--and with justice--for at that moment Downes appeared on the +first-floor landing, cursing and blaspheming. + +"He's my 'prentice! he's my servant! I've got a bond, with his own hand to +it, to serve me for three years. I'll have the law of you--I will!" + +Then the meaning of the big stick came out. The old man leapt down the +stairs, and seized Downes. "You're the tyrant as has locked my barn up +here!" And a thrashing commenced, which it made my bones ache only to look +at. Downes had no chance; the old man felled him on his face in a couple of +blows, and taking both hands to his stick, hewed away at him as if he had +been a log. + +"I waint hit a's head! I waint hit a's head!"--whack, whack. "Let me +be!"--whack, whack-puff. "It does me gude, it does me gude!"--puff, +puff, puff--whack. "I've been a bottling of it up for three years, come +Whitsuntide!"--whack, whack, whack--while Mackaye and Crossthwaite stood +coolly looking on, and the wife shut herself up in the side-room, and +screamed "Murder!" + +The unhappy policeman stood at his wits' end, between the prisoner below +and the breach of the peace above, bellowing in vain, in the Queen's name, +to us, and to the grinning tailors on the landing. At last, as Downes's +life seemed in danger, he wavered; the Jew-boy seized the moment, jumped +up, upsetting the constable, dashed like an eel between Crossthwaite and +Mackaye, gave me a back-handed blow in passing, which I felt for a week +after, and vanished through the street-door, which he locked after him. + +"Very well!" said the functionary, rising solemnly, and pulling out a +note-book--"Scar under left eye, nose a little twisted to the right, bad +chilblains on the hands. You'll keep till next time, young man. Now, +you fat gentleman up there, have you done a qualifying of yourself for +Newgate?" + +The old man had ran up-stairs again, and was hugging his son; but when the +policeman lifted Downes, he rushed back to his victim, and begged, like a +great school-boy, for leave to "bet him joost won bit moor." + +"Let me bet un! I'll pay un!--I'll pay all as my son owes un! Marcy me! +where's my pooss?" And so on raged the Babel, till we got the two poor +fellows safe out of the house. We had to break open the door to do it, +thanks to that imp of Israel. + +"For God's sake, take us too!" almost screamed five or six other voices. + +"They're all in debt--every onesh; they sha'n't go till they paysh, if +there's law in England," whined the old Jew, who had re-appeared. + +"I'll pay for 'em--I'll pay every farden, if so be as they treated my boy +well. Here, you, Mr. Locke, there's the ten pounds as I promised you. Why, +whor is my pooss?" + +The policeman solemnly handed it to him. He took it, turned it over, +looked at the policeman half frightened, and pointed with his fat thumb at +Mackaye. + +"Well, he said as you was a conjuror--and sure he was right." + +He paid me the money. I had no mind to keep it in such company; so I got +the poor fellows' pawn-tickets, and Crossthwaite and I took the things +out for them. When we returned, we found them in a group in the passage, +holding the door open, in their fear lest we should be locked up, or +entrapped in some way. Their spirits seemed utterly broken. Some three or +four went off to lodge where they could; the majority went upstairs again +to work. That, even that dungeon, was their only home--their only hope--as +it is of thousands of "free" Englishmen at this moment. + +We returned, and found the old man with his new-found prodigal sitting on +his knee, as if he had been a baby. Sandy told me afterwards, that he had +scarcely kept him from carrying the young man all the way home; he was +convinced that the poor fellow was dying of starvation. I think really +he was not far wrong. In the corner sat Kelly, crouched together like a +baboon, blubbering, hurrahing, invoking the saints, cursing the sweaters, +and blessing the present company. We were afraid, for several days, that +his wits were seriously affected. + +And, in his old arm-chair, pipe in mouth, sat good Sandy Mackaye, wiping +his eyes with the many-coloured sleeve, and moralizing to himself, _sotto +voce_: + +"The auld Romans made slaves o' their debitors; sae did the Anglo-Saxons, +for a' good Major Cartwright has writ to the contrary. But I didna ken +the same Christian practice was part o' the Breetish constitution. Aweel, +aweel--atween Riot Acts, Government by Commissions, and ither little +extravagants and codicils o' Mammon's making, it's no that easy to ken, +the day, what is the Breetish constitution, and what isn't. Tak a drappie, +Billy Porter, lad?" + +"Never again so long as I live. I've learnt a lesson and a half about that, +these last few months." + +"Aweel, moderation's best, but abstinence better than naething. Nae man +shall deprive me o' my leeberty, but I'll tempt nae man to gie up his." And +he actually put the whisky-bottle by into the cupboard. + +The old man and his son went home next day, promising me, if I would but +come to see them, "twa hundert acres o' the best partridge-shooting, and +wild dooks as plenty as sparrows; and to live in clover till I bust, if I +liked." And so, as Bunyan has it, they went on their way, and I saw them no +more. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +AN EMERSONIAN SERMON. + + +Certainly, if John Crossthwaite held the victim-of-circumstance doctrine +in theory, he did not allow Mike Kelly to plead it in practice, as +an extenuation of his misdeeds. Very different from his Owenite +"it's-nobody's-fault" harangues in the debating society, or his admiration +for the teacher of whom my readers shall have a glimpse shortly, was his +lecture that evening to the poor Irishmen on "It's all your own fault." +Unhappy Kelly! he sat there like a beaten cur, looking first at one +of us, and then at the other, for mercy, and finding none. As soon +as Crossthwaite's tongue was tired, Mackaye's began, on the sins of +drunkenness, hastiness, improvidence, over-trustfulness, &c., &c., and, +above all, on the cardinal offence of not having signed the protest years +before, and spurned the dishonourable trade, as we had done. Even his most +potent excuse that "a boy must live somehow," Crossthwaite treated as +contemptuously as if he had been a very Leonidas, while Mackaye chimed in +with-- + +"An' ye a Papist! ye talk o' praying to saints an' martyrs, that died in +torments because they wad na do what they should na do? What ha' ye to +do wi' martyrs?--a meeserable wretch that sells his soul for a mess o' +pottage--four slices per diem o' thin bread-and-butter? Et propter veetam +veevendi perdere causas! Dinna tell me o' your hardships--ye've had your +deserts--your rights were just equivalent to your mights, an' so ye got +them." + +"Faix, thin, Misther Mackaye, darlint, an' whin did I desarve to pawn me +own goose an' board, an' sit looking at the spidhers for the want o' them?" + +"Pawn his ain goose! Pawn himsel! pawn his needle--gin it had been worth +the pawning, they'd ha' ta'en it. An' yet there's a command in Deuteronomy, +Ye shall na tak the millstone in pledge, for it's a man's life; nor yet +keep his raiment ower night, but gie it the puir body back, that he may +sleep in his ain claes, an' bless ye. O--but pawnbrokers dinna care for +blessings--na marketable value in them, whatsoever." + +"And the shopkeeper," said I, "in 'the Arabian Nights,' refuses to take the +fisherman's net in pledge, because he gets his living thereby." + +"Ech! but, laddie, they were puir legal Jews, under carnal ordinances, an' +daur na even tak an honest five per cent interest for their money. An' the +baker o' Bagdad, why he was a benighted heathen, ye ken, an' deceivit by +that fause prophet, Mahomet, to his eternal damnation, or he wad never ha' +gone aboot to fancy a fisherman was his brither." + +"Faix, an' ain't we all brothers?" asked Kelly. + +"Ay, and no," said Sandy, with an expression which would have been a smile, +but for its depths of bitter earnestness; "brethren in Christ, my laddie." + +"An' ain't that all over the same?" + +"Ask the preachers. Gin they meant brothers, they'd say brothers, be sure; +but because they don't mean brothers at a', they say brethren--ye'll mind, +brethren--to soun' antiquate, an' professional, an' perfunctory-like, for +fear it should be ower real, an' practical, an' startling, an' a' that; +and then jist limit it down wi' a' in Christ,' for fear o' owre wide +applications, and a' that. But + + "For a' that, and a' that. + It's comin' yet, for a' that, + When man an' man, the warld owre, + Shall brothers be, for a' that-- + +"An' na brithren any mair at a'!" + +"An' didn't the blessed Jesus die for all?" + +"What? for heretics, Micky?" + +"Bedad, thin, an' I forgot that intirely!" + +"Of course you did! It's strange, laddie," said he, turning to me, "that +that Name suld be everywhere, fra the thunderers o' Exeter Ha' to this +puir, feckless Paddy, the watchword o' exclusiveness. I'm thinking ye'll no +find the workmen believe in't, till somebody can fin' the plan o' making it +the sign o' universal comprehension. Gin I had na seen in my youth that a +brither in Christ meant less a thousand-fold than a brither out o' him, I +might ha' believit the noo--we'll no say what. I've an owre great organ o' +marvellousness, an' o' veneration too, I'm afeard." + +"Ah!" said Crossthwaite, "you should come and hear Mr. Windrush to-night, +about the all-embracing benevolence of the Deity, and the abomination of +limiting it by all those narrow creeds and dogmas." + +"An' wha's Meester Windrush, then?" + +"Oh, he's an American; he was a Calvinist preacher originally, I believe; +but, as he told us last Sunday evening, he soon cast away the worn-out +vestures of an obsolete faith, which were fast becoming only crippling +fetters." + +"An' ran oot sarkless on the public, eh? I'm afeard there's mony a man else +that throws awa' the gude auld plaid o' Scots Puritanism, an' is unco fain +to cover his nakedness wi' ony cast popinjay's feathers he can forgather +wi'. Aweel, aweel--a puir priestless age it is, the noo. We'll e'en gang +hear him the nicht, Alton, laddie; ye ha' na darkened the kirk door this +mony a day--nor I neither, mair by token." + +It was too true. I had utterly given up the whole problem of religion as +insoluble. I believed in poetry, science, and democracy--and they were +enough for me then; enough, at least, to leave a mighty hunger in my heart, +I knew not for what. And as for Mackaye, though brought up, as he told me, +a rigid Scotch Presbyterian, he had gradually ceased to attend the church +of his fathers. + +"It was no the kirk o' his fathers--the auld God--trusting kirk that +Clavers dragoonit down by burns and muirsides. It was a' gane dead an' dry; +a piece of Auld-Bailey barristration anent soul-saving dodges. What did he +want wi' proofs o' the being o' God, an' o' the doctrine o' original sin? +He could see eneugh o' them ayont the shop-door, ony tide. They made puir +Rabbie Burns an anything-arian, wi' their blethers, an' he was near gaun +the same gate." + +And, besides, he absolutely refused to enter any place of worship where +there were pews. "He wadna follow after a multitude to do evil; he wad na +gang before his Maker wi' a lee in his right hand. Nae wonder folks were so +afraid o' the names o' equality an' britherhood, when they'd kicked them +out e'en o' the kirk o' God. Pious folks may ca' me a sinfu' auld Atheist. +They winna gang to a harmless stage play--an' richt they--for fear o' +countenancing the sin that's dune there, an' I winna gang to the kirk, for +fear o' countenancing the sin that's dune there, by putting down my hurdies +on that stool o' antichrist, a haspit pew!" + +I was, therefore, altogether surprised at the promptitude with which he +agreed to go and hear Crossthwaite's new-found prophet. His reasons for so +doing may be, I think, gathered from the conversation towards the end of +this chapter. + +Well, we went; and I, for my part, was charmed with Mr. Windrush's +eloquence. His style, which was altogether Emersonian, quite astonished me +by its alternate bursts of what I considered brilliant declamation, and +of forcible epigrammatic antithesis. I do not deny that I was a little +startled by some of his doctrines, and suspected that he had not seen much, +either of St. Giles's cellars or tailors' workshops either, when he talked +of sin as "only a lower form of good. Nothing," he informed us, "was +produced in nature without pain and disturbance; and what we had been +taught to call sin was, in fact, nothing but the birth-throes attendant on +the progress of the species.--As for the devil, Novalis, indeed, had gone +so far as to suspect him to be a necessary illusion. Novalis was a mystic, +and tainted by the old creeds. The illusion was not necessary--it was +disappearing before the fast-approaching meridian light of philosophic +religion. Like the myths of Christianity, it had grown up in an age of +superstition, when men, blind to the wondrous order of the universe, +believed that supernatural beings, like the Homeric gods, actually +interfered in the affairs of mortals. Science had revealed the +irrevocability of the laws of nature--was man alone to be exempt from them? +No. The time would come when it would be as obsolete an absurdity to talk +of the temptation of a fiend, as it was now to talk of the wehrwolf, or +the angel of the thunder-cloud. The metaphor might remain, doubtless, +as a metaphor, in the domain of poetry, whose office was to realize, +in objective symbols, the subjective ideas of the human intellect; but +philosophy, and the pure sentiment of religion, which found all things, +even God himself, in the recesses of its own enthusiastic heart, must +abjure such a notion." + + * * * * * + +"What!" he asked again, "shall all nature be a harmonious whole, +reflecting, in every drop of dew which gems the footsteps of the morning, +the infinite love and wisdom of its Maker, and man alone be excluded +from his part in that concordant choir? Yet such is the doctrine of the +advocates of free-will, and of sin--its phantom-bantling. Man disobey his +Maker! disarrange and break the golden wheels and springs of the infinite +machine! The thought were blasphemy!--impossibility! All things fulfil +their destiny; and so does man, in a higher or lower sphere of being. Shall +I punish the robber? Shall I curse the profligate? As soon destroy the +toad, because my partial taste may judge him ugly; or doom to hell, for +his carnivorous appetite, the muscanonge of my native lakes! Toad is not +horrible to toad, or thief to thief. Philanthropists or statesmen may +environ him with more genial circumstances, and so enable his propensities +to work more directly for the good of society; but to punish him--to punish +nature for daring to be nature!--Never! I may thank the Upper Destinies +that they have not made me as other men are--that they have endowed me with +nobler instincts, a more delicate conformation than the thief; but I have +my part to play, and he has his. Why should we wish to be other than the +All-wise has made us?" + +"Fine doctrine that," grumbled Sandy; "gin ye've first made up your mind +wi' the Pharisee, that ye _are_ no like ither men." + +"Shall I pray, then? For what? I will coax none, natter none--not even the +Supreme! I will not be absurd enough to wish to change that order, by which +sun and stars, saints and sinners, alike fulfil their destinies. There is +one comfort, my friends; coax and flatter as we will, he will not hear us." + +"Pleasant, for puir deevils like us!" quoth Mackaye. + +"What then remains? Thanks, thanks--not of words, but of actions. Worship +is a life, not a ceremony. He who would honour the Supreme, let him +cheerfully succumb to the destiny which the Supreme has allotted, and, +like the shell or the flower--('Or the pickpocket,' added Mackaye, +almost audibly)--become the happy puppet of the universal impulse. He +who would honour Christ, let him become a Christ himself! Theodore of +Mopsuestia--born, alas! before his time--a prophet for whom as yet no +audience stood ready in the amphitheatre of souls--'Christ!' he was wont +to say; 'I can become Christ myself, if I will.' Become thou Christ, my +brother! He has an idea--the idea of utter submission--abnegation of his +own fancied will before the supreme necessities. Fulfil that idea, and thou +art he! Deny thyself, and then only wilt thou be a reality; for thou hast +no self. If thou hadst a self, thou wouldst but lie in denying it--and +would The Being thank thee for denying what he had given thee? But thou +hast none! God is circumstance, and thou his creature! Be content! Fear +not, strive not, change not, repent not! Thou art nothing! Be nothing, and +thou becomest a part of all things!" + +And so Mr. Windrush ended his discourse, which Crossthwaite had been all +the while busily taking down in short-hand, for the edification of the +readers of a certain periodical, and also for those of this my Life. + +I plead guilty to having been entirely carried away by what I heard. There +was so much which was true, so much more which seemed true, so much which +it would have been convenient to believe true, and all put so eloquently +and originally, as I then considered, that, in short, I was in raptures, +and so was poor dear Crossthwaite; and as we walked home, we dinned Mr. +Windrush's praises one into each of Mackaye's ears. The old man, however, +paced on silent and meditative. At last-- + +"A hunder sects or so in the land o' Gret Britain; an' a hunder or so +single preachers, each man a sect of his ain! an' this the last fashion! +Last, indeed! The moon of Calvinism's far gone in the fourth quarter, +when it's come to the like o' that. Truly, the soul-saving business is +a'thegither fa'n to a low ebb, as Master Tummas says somewhere!" + +"Well, but," asked Crossthwaite, "was not that man, at least, splendid?" + +"An' hoo much o' thae gran' objectives an' subjectives did ye comprehen', +then, Johnnie, my man?" + +"Quite enough for me," answered John, in a somewhat nettled tone. + +"An' sae did I." + +"But you ought to hear him often. You can't judge of his system from one +sermon, in this way." + +"Seestem! and what's that like?" + +"Why, he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties, on the one broad +fundamental ground of the unity of God as revealed by science--" + +"Verra like uniting o' men by just pu'ing aff their claes, and telling 'em, +'There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the one broad fundamental principle o' +want o' breeks.'" + +"Of course," went on Crossthwaite, without taking notice of this +interruption, "he allows full liberty of conscience. All he wishes for is +the emancipation of intellect. He will allow every one, he says, to realize +that idea to himself, by the representations which suit him best." + +"An' so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry, gin a man finds +it good to tickle up his soul?" + +"Ay, he did speak of that--what did he call it? Oh! 'one of the ways in +which the Christian idea naturally embodied itself in imaginative minds!' +but the higher intellects, of course, would want fewer helps of that kind. +'They would see'--ay, that was it--'the pure white light of truth, without +requiring those coloured refracting media.'" + +"That wad depend muckle on whether the light o' truth chose or not, I'm +thinking. But, Johnnie, lad--guide us and save us!--whaur got ye a' these +gran' outlandish words the nicht?" + +"Haven't I been taking down every one of these lectures for the press?" + +"The press gang to the father o't--and you too, for lending your han' in +the matter--for a mair accursed aristocrat I never heerd, sin' I first ate +haggis. Oh, ye gowk--ye gowk! Dinna ye see what be the upshot o' siccan +doctrin'? That every puir fellow as has no gret brains in his head will +be left to his superstition, an' his ignorance to fulfil the lusts o' his +flesh; while the few that are geniuses, or fancy themselves sae, are to +ha' the monopoly o' this private still o' philosophy--these carbonari, +illuminati, vehmgericht, samothracian mysteries o' bottled moonshine. An' +when that comes to pass, I'll just gang back to my schule and my catechism, +and begin again wi' 'who was born o' the Virgin Mary, suffered oonder +Pontius Pilate!' Hech! lads, there's no subjectives and objectives there, +na beggarly, windy abstractions, but joost a plain fact, that God cam' down +to look for puir bodies, instead o' leaving puir bodies to gang looking for +Him. An' here's a pretty place to be left looking for Him in--between gin +shops and gutters! A pretty Gospel for the publicans an' harlots, to tell +'em that if their bairns are canny eneugh, they may possibly some day be +allowed to believe that there is one God, and not twa! And then, by way of +practical application--'Hech! my dear, starving, simple brothers, ye manna +be sae owre conscientious, and gang fashing yourselves anent being brutes +an' deevils, for the gude God's made ye sae, and He's verra weel content to +see you sae, gin ye be content or no.'" + +"Then, do you believe in the old doctrines of Christianity?" I asked. + +"Dinna speir what I believe in. I canna tell ye. I've been seventy years +trying to believe in God, and to meet anither man that believed in him. So +I'm just like the Quaker o' the town o' Redcross, that met by himself every +First-day in his ain hoose." + +"Well, but," I asked again, "is not complete freedom of thought a glorious +aim--to emancipate man's noblest part--the intellect--from the trammels of +custom and ignorance?" + +"Intellect--intellect!" rejoined he, according to his fashion, catching one +up at a word, and playing on that in order to answer, not what one said, +but what one's words led to. "I'm sick o' all the talk anent intellect I +hear noo. An' what's the use o' intellect? 'Aristocracy o' intellect,' +they cry. Curse a' aristocracies--intellectual anes, as well as anes o' +birth, or rank, or money! What! will I ca' a man my superior, because +he's cleverer than mysel?--will I boo down to a bit o' brains, ony mair +than to a stock or a stane? Let a man prove himsel' better than me, my +laddie--honester, humbler, kinder, wi' mair sense o' the duty o' man, an' +the weakness o' man--and that man I'll acknowledge--that man's my king, my +leader, though he war as stupid as Eppe Dalgleish, that could na count five +on her fingers, and yet keepit her drucken father by her ain hands' labour +for twenty-three yeers." + +We could not agree to all this, but we made a rule of never contradicting +the old sage in one of his excited moods, for fear of bringing on a week's +silent fit--a state which generally ended in his smoking himself into a +bilious melancholy; but I made up my mind to be henceforth a frequent +auditor of Mr. Windrush's oratory. + +"An' sae the deevil's dead!" said Sandy, half to himself, as he sat +crooning and smoking that night over the fire. "Gone at last, puir +fallow!--an' he sae little appreciated, too! Every gowk laying his ain +sins on Nickie's back, puir Nickie!--verra like that much misunderstood +politeecian, Mr. John Cade, as Charles Buller ca'd him in the Hoose o' +Commons--an' he to be dead at last! the warld'll seem quite unco without +his auld-farrant phizog on the streets. Aweel, aweel--aiblins he's but +shammin'.-- + + "When pleasant Spring came on apace, + And showers began to fa', + John Barleycorn got up again, + And sore surprised them a'. + +"At ony rate, I'd no bury him till he began smell a wee strong like. It's a +grewsome thing, is premature interment, Alton, laddie!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. + + +But all this while, my slavery to Mr. O'Flynn's party-spirit and coarseness +was becoming daily more and more intolerable--an explosion was inevitable; +and an explosion came. + +Mr. O'Flynn found out that I had been staying at Cambridge, and at a +cathedral city too; and it was quite a godsend to him to find any one who +knew a word about the institutions at which he had been railing weekly for +years. So nothing would serve him but my writing a set of articles on the +universities, as a prelude to one on the Cathedral Establishments. In +vain I pleaded the shortness of my stay there, and the smallness of my +information. + +"Och, were not abuses notorious? And couldn't I get them up out of any +Radical paper--and just put in a little of my own observations, and a +dashing personal cut or two, to spice the thing up, and give it an original +look? and if I did not choose to write that--why," with an enormous oath, +"I should write nothing." So--for I was growing weaker and weaker, and +indeed my hack-writing was breaking down my moral sense, as it does that +of most men--I complied; and burning with vexation, feeling myself almost +guilty of a breach of trust toward those from whom I had received nothing +but kindness, I scribbled off my first number and sent it to the editor--to +see it appear next week, three-parts re-written, and every fact of my own +furnishing twisted and misapplied, till the whole thing was as vulgar and +commonplace a piece of rant as ever disgraced the people's cause. And all +this, in spite of a solemn promise, confirmed by a volley of oaths, that +I "should say what I liked, and speak my whole mind, as one who had seen +things with his own eyes had a right to do." + +Furious, I set off to the editor; and not only my pride, but what literary +conscience I had left, was stirred to the bottom by seeing myself made, +whether I would or not, a blackguard and a slanderer. + +As it was ordained, Mr. O'Flynn was gone out for an hour or two; and, +unable to settle down to any work till I had fought my battle with +him fairly out, I wandered onward, towards the West End, staring into +print-shop windows, and meditating on many things. + +As it was ordained, also, I turned up Regent Street, and into Langham +Place; when, at the door of All-Souls Church, behold a crowd and a long +string of carriages arriving, and all the pomp and glory of a grand +wedding. + +I joined the crowd from mere idleness, and somehow found myself in the +first rank, just as the bride was stepping out of the carriage--it was +Miss Staunton; and the old gentleman who handed her out was no other +than the dean. They were, of course, far too deeply engaged to recognise +insignificant little me, so that I could stare as thoroughly to my heart's +content as any of the butcher-boys and nursery-maids around me. + +She was closely veiled--but not too closely to prevent my seeing her +magnificent lip and nostril curling with pride, resolve, rich tender +passion. Her glorious black-brown hair--the true "purple locks" which Homer +so often talks of--rolled down beneath her veil in great heavy ringlets; +and with her tall and rounded figure, and step as firm and queenly as +if she were going to a throne, she seemed to me the very ideal of those +magnificent Eastern Zubeydehs and Nourmahals, whom I used to dream of after +reading the "Arabian Nights." + +As they entered the doorway, almost touching me, she looked round, as if +for some one. The dean whispered something in his gentle, stately way, and +she answered by one of those looks so intense, and yet so bright, so full +of unutterable depths of meaning and emotion, that, in spite of all my +antipathy, I felt an admiration akin to awe thrill through me, and gazed +after her so intently, that Lillian--Lillian herself--was at my side, and +almost passed me before I was aware of it. + +Yes, there she was, the foremost among a bevy of fair girls, "herself the +fairest far," all April smiles and tears, golden curls, snowy rosebuds, and +hovering clouds of lace--a fairy queen;--but yet--but yet--how shallow that +hazel, eye, how empty of meaning those delicate features, compared with the +strength and intellectual richness of the face which had preceded her! + +It was too true--I had never remarked it before; but now it flashed +across me like lightning--and like lightning vanished; for Lillian's eye +caught mine, and there was the faintest spark of a smile of recognition, +and pleased surprise, and a nod. I blushed scarlet with delight; some +servant-girl or other, who stood next to me, had seen it too--quick-eyed +that women are--and was looking curiously at me. I turned, I knew not why, +in my delicious shame, and plunged through the crowd to hide I knew not +what. + +I walked on--poor fool--in an ecstasy; the whole world was transfigured +in my eyes, and virtue and wisdom beamed from every face I passed. The +omnibus-horses were racers, and the drivers--were they not my brothers of +the people? The very policemen looked sprightly and philanthropic. I shook +hands earnestly with the crossing-sweeper of the Regent Circus, gave him +my last twopence, and rushed on, like a young David, to exterminate that +Philistine O'Flynn. + +Ah well! I was a great fool, as others too have been; but yet, that little +chance-meeting did really raise me. It made me sensible that I was made +for better things than low abuse of the higher classes. It gave me courage +to speak out, and act without fear, of consequences, once at least in +that confused facing-both-ways period of my life. O woman! woman! only +true missionary of civilization and brotherhood, and gentle, forgiving +charity; is it in thy power, and perhaps in thine only, to bind up the +broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives? One real lady, who +should dare to stoop, what might she not do with us--with our sisters? If-- + +There are hundreds, answers the reader, who do stoop. Elizabeth Fry was a +lady, well-born, rich, educated, and she has many scholars. + +True, my dear readers, true--and may God bless her and her scholars. +Do you think the working men forget them? But look at St. Giles's, or +Spitalfields, or Shadwell, and say, is not the harvest plentiful, and the +labourers, alas! few? No one asserts that nothing is done; the question is, +is enough done? Does the supply of mercy meet the demand of misery? Walk +into the next court and see! + + * * * * * + +I found Mr. O'Flynn in his sanctum, busy with paste and scissors, in the +act of putting in a string of advertisements--indecent French novels, +Atheistic tracts, quack medicines, and slopsellers' puffs; and commenced +with as much dignity as I could muster: + +"What on earth do you mean, sir, by re-writing my article?" + +"What--(in the other place)--do you mean by giving me the trouble of +re-writing it? Me head's splitting now with sitting up, cutting out, and +putting in. Poker o' Moses! but ye'd given it an intirely aristocratic +tendency. What did ye mane" (and three or four oaths rattled out) "by +talking about the pious intentions of the original founders, and the +democratic tendencies of monastic establishments?" + +"I wrote it because I thought it." + +"Is that any reason ye should write it? And there was another bit, too--it +made my hair stand on end when I saw it, to think how near I was sending +the copy to press without looking at it--something about a French +Socialist, and Church Property." + +"Oh! you mean, I suppose, the story of the French Socialist, who told me +that church property was just the only property in England which he would +spare, because it was the only one which had definite duties attached +to it, that the real devourers of the people were not the bishops, who, +however rich, were at least bound to work in return for their riches, +but the landlords and millionaires, who refused to confess the duties of +property, while they raved about its rights." + +"Bedad, that's it; and pretty doctrine, too!" + +"But it's true: it's an entirely new and a very striking notion, and I +consider it my duty to mention it." + +"Thrue! What the devil does that matter? There's a time to speak the truth, +and a time not, isn't there? It'll make a grand hit, now, in a leader upon +the Irish Church question, to back the prastes against the landlords. But +if I'd let that in as it stood, bedad, I'd have lost three parts of my +subscribers the next week. Every soul of the Independents, let alone the +Chartists, would have bid me good morning. Now do, like a good boy, give us +something more the right thing next time. Draw it strong.--A good drunken +supper-party and a police-row; if ye haven't seen one, get it up out of +Pater Priggins--or Laver might do, if the other wasn't convanient. That's +Dublin, to be sure, but one university's just like another. And give us a +seduction or two, and a brace of Dons carried home drunk from Barnwell by +the Procthors." + +"Really I never saw anything of the kind; and as for profligacy amongst +the Dons, I don't believe it exists. I'll call them idle, and bigoted, and +careless of the morals of the young men, because I know that they are so; +but as for anything more, I believe them to be as sober, respectable a set +of Pharisees as the world ever saw." + +Mr. O'Flynn was waxing warm, and the bully-vein began fast to show itself. + +"I don't care a curse, sir! My subscribers won't stand it, and they +sha'n't! I am a man of business, sir, and a man of the world, sir, and +faith that's more than you are, and I know what will sell the paper, and by +J----s I'll let no upstart spalpeen dictate to me!" + +"Then I'll tell you what, sir," quoth I, waxing warm in my turn, "I don't +know which are the greater rogues, you or your subscribers. You a patriot? +You are a humbug. Look at those advertisements, and deny it if you can. +Crying out for education, and helping to debauch the public mind with +Voltaire's 'Candide,' and Eugène Sue--swearing by Jesus, and puffing +Atheism and blasphemy--yelling at a quack government, quack law, +quack priesthoods, and then dirtying your fingers with half-crowns +for advertising Holloway's ointment and Parr's life pills--shrieking +about slavery of labour to capital, and inserting Moses and Son's +doggerel--ranting about searching investigations and the march of +knowledge, and concealing every fact which cannot be made to pander to the +passions of your dupes--extolling the freedom of the press, and showing +yourself in your own office a tyrant and a censor of the press. You a +patriot? You the people's friend? You are doing everything in your power to +blacken the people's cause in the eyes of their enemies. You are simply a +humbug, a hypocrite, and a scoundrel; and so I bid you good morning." + +Mr. O'Flynn had stood, during this harangue, speechless with passion, those +loose lips of his wreathing like a pair of earthworms. It was only when I +stopped that he regained his breath, and with a volley of incoherent oaths, +caught up his chair and hurled it at my head. Luckily, I had seen enough of +his temper already, to keep my hand on the lock of the door for the last +five minutes. I darted out of the room quicker than I ever did out of one +before or since. The chair took effect on the luckless door; and as I threw +a flying glance behind me, I saw one leg sticking through the middle panel, +in a way that augured ill for my skull, had it been in the way of Mr. +O'Flynn's fury. + +I ran home to Mackaye in a state of intense self-glorification, and told +him the whole story. He chuckled, he crowed, he hugged me to his bosom. + +"Leeze me o' ye! but I kenned ye were o' the true Norse blude after a'! + + "For a' that, an' a' that, + A man's a man for a' that. + +"Oh, but I hae expeckit it this month an' mare! Oh, but I prophesied it, +Johnnie!" + +"Then why, in Heaven's name, did you introduce me to such a scoundrel?" + +"I sent you to schule, lad, I sent you to schule. Ye wad na be ruled by me. +Ye tuk me for a puir doited auld misanthrope; an' I thocht to gie ye the +meat ye lusted after, an' fill ye wi' the fruit o' your ain desires. An' +noo that ye've gane doon in the fire o' temptation, an' conquered, here's +your reward standin' ready. Special prawvidences!--wha can doot them? I ha' +had mony--miracles I might ca' them, to see how they cam' just when I was +gaun daft wi' despair." + +And then he told me that the editor of a popular journal, of the Howitt +and Eliza Cook school, had called on me that morning, and promised me work +enough, and pay enough, to meet all present difficulties. + +I did indeed accept the curious coincidence, if not as a reward for an act +of straightforwardness, in which I saw no merit, at least as proof that the +upper powers had not altogether forgotten me. I found both the editor and +his periodical, as I should have wished them, temperate and sunny--somewhat +clap-trap and sentimental, perhaps, and afraid of speaking out, as all +parties are, but still willing to allow my fancy free range in light +fictions, descriptions of foreign countries, scraps of showy rose-pink +morality and such like; which, though they had no more power against the +raging mass of crime, misery, and discontent, around, than a peacock's +feather against a three-decker, still were all genial, graceful, kindly, +humanizing, and soothed my discontented and impatient heart in the work of +composition. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +THE TOWNSMAN'S SERMON TO THE GOWNSMAN. + + +One morning in February, a few days after this explosion, I was on the +point of starting to go to the dean's house about that weary list of +subscribers, which seemed destined never to be filled up, when my cousin +George burst in upon me. He was in the highest good spirits at having just +taken a double first-class at Cambridge; and after my congratulations, +sincere and hearty enough, were over, he offered to accompany me to that +reverend gentleman's house. + +He said in an off-hand way, that he had no particular business there, but +he thought it just as well to call on the dean and mention his success, in +case the old fellow should not have heard of it. + +"For you see," he said, "I am a sort of _protégé_, both on my own account +and on Lord Lynedale's--Ellerton, he is now--you know he is just married to +the dean's niece, Miss Staunton--and Ellerton's a capital fellow--promised +me a living as soon as I'm in priest's orders. So my cue is now," he went +on as we walked down the Strand together, "to get ordained as fast as ever +I can." + +"But," I asked, "have you read much for ordination, or seen much of what a +clergyman's work should be?" + +"Oh! as for that--you know it isn't one out of ten who's ever entered a +school, or a cottage even, except to light a cigar, before he goes into the +church: and as for the examination, that's all humbug; any man may cram it +all up in a month--and, thanks to King's College, I knew all I wanted to +know before I went to Cambridge. And I shall be three-and-twenty by Trinity +Sunday, and then in I go, neck or nothing. Only the confounded bore is, +that this Bishop of London won't give one a title--won't let any man into +his diocese, who has not been ordained two years; and so I shall be shoved +down into some poking little country-curacy, without a chance of making +play before the world, or getting myself known at all. Horrid bore! isn't +it?" + +"I think," I said, "considering what London is just now, the bishop's +regulation seems to be one of the best specimens of episcopal wisdom that +I've heard of for some time." + +"Great bore for me, though, all the same: for I must make a name, I +can tell you, if I intend to get on. A person must work like a horse, +now-a-days, to succeed at all; and Lynedale's a desperately particular +fellow, with all sorts of _outré_ notions about people's duties and +vocations and heaven knows what." + +"Well," I said, "my dear cousin, and have you no high notions of a +clergyman's vocation? because we--I mean the working men--have. It's just +their high idea of what a clergyman should be, which makes them so furious +at clergymen for being what they are." + +"It's a queer way of showing their respect to the priesthood," he answered, +"to do all they can to exterminate it." + +"I dare say they are liable, like other men, to confound the thing with its +abuses; but if they hadn't some dim notion that the thing might be made a +good thing in itself, you may depend upon it they would not rave against +those abuses so fiercely." (The reader may see that I had not forgotten my +conversation with Miss Staunton.) "And," thought I to myself, "is it not +you, and such as you, who do so incorporate the abuses into the system, +that one really cannot tell which is which, and longs to shove the whole +thing aside as rotten to the core, and make a trial of something new?" + +"Well, but," I said, again returning to the charge, for the subject was +altogether curious and interesting to me, "do you really believe the +doctrines of the Prayer-book, George?" + +"Believe them!" he answered, in a tone of astonishment, "why not? I was +brought up a Churchman, whatever my parents were; I was always intended for +the ministry. I'd sign the Thirty-nine Articles now, against any man in +the three kingdoms: and as for all the proofs out of Scripture and Church +History, I've known them ever since I was sixteen--I'll get them all up +again in a week as fresh as ever." + +"But," I rejoined, astonished in my turn at my cousin's notion of what +belief was, "have you any personal faith?--you know what I mean--I hate +using cant words--but inward experience of the truth of all these great +ideas, which, true or false, you will have to preach and teach? Would you +live by them, die for them, as a patriot would for his country, now?" + +"My dear fellow, I don't know anything about all those Methodistical, +mystical, Calvinistical, inward experiences, and all that. I'm a Churchman, +remember, and a High Churchman, too; and the doctrine of the Church is, +that children are regenerated in holy baptism; and there's not the least +doubt, from the authority both of Scripture and the fathers, that that's +the--" + +"For Heaven's sake," I said, "no polemical discussions! Whether you're +right or wrong, that's not what I'm talking about. What I want to know is +this:--you are going to teach people about God and Jesus Christ. Do you +delight in God? Do you love Jesus Christ? Never mind what I do, or think, +or believe. What do you do, George?" + +"Well, my dear fellow, if you take things in that way, you know, of +course"--and he dropped his voice into that peculiar tone, by which all +sects seem to think they show their reverence; while to me, as to most +other working men, it never seemed anything but a symbol of the separation +and discrepancy between their daily thoughts and their religious ones--"of +course, we don't any of us think of these things half enough, and I'm sure +I wish I could be more earnest than I am; but I can only hope it will come +in time. The Church holds that there's a grace given in ordination; and +really--really, I do hope and wish to do my duty--indeed, one can't help +doing it; one is so pushed on by the immense competition for preferment; an +idle parson hasn't a chance now-a-days." + +"But," I asked again, half-laughing, half-disgusted, "do you know what your +duty is?" + +"Bless you, my good fellow, a man can't go wrong there. Carry out the +Church system; that's the thing--all laid down by rule and method. A man +has but to work out that--and it's the only one for the lower classes I'm +convinced." + +"Strange," I said, "that they have from the first been so little of that +opinion, that every attempt to enforce it, for the last three hundred +years, has ended either in persecution or revolution." + +"Ah! that was all those vile puritans' fault. They wouldn't give the Church +a chance of showing her powers." + +"What! not when she had it all her own way, during the whole eighteenth +century?" + +"Ah! but things are very different now. The clergy are awakened now to the +real beauty of the Catholic machinery; and you have no notion how much is +doing in church-building and schools, and societies of every sort and kind. +It is quite incredible what is being done now for the lower orders by the +Church." + +"I believe," I said, "that the clergy are exceedingly improved; and I +believe, too, that the men to whom they owe all their improvement are the +Wesleys and Whitfields--in short, the very men whom they drove one by one +out of the Church, from persecution or disgust. And I do think it strange, +that if so much is doing for the lower classes, the working men, who form +the mass of the lower classes, are just those who scarcely feel the effects +of it; while the churches seem to be filled with children, and rich and +respectable, to the almost entire exclusion of the adult lower classes. A +strange religion this!" I went on, "and, to judge by its effects, a very +different one from that preached in Judea 1800 years ago, if we are to +believe the Gospel story." + +"What on earth do you mean? Is not the Church of England the very purest +form of Apostolic Christianity?" + +"It may be--and so may the other sects. But, somehow, in Judea, it was +the publicans and harlots who pressed into the kingdom of heaven; and it +was the common people who heard Christ gladly. Christianity, then, was a +movement in the hearts of the lower order. But now, my dear fellow, you +rich, who used to be told, in St. James's time, to weep and howl, have +turned the tables upon us poor. It is _you_ who are talking, all day long, +of converting _us_. Look at any place of worship you like, orthodox and +heretical.--Who fill the pews?--the outcast and the reprobate? No! the +Pharisees and the covetous, who used to deride Christ, fill His churches, +and say still, 'This people, these masses, who know not the Gospel are +accursed.' And the universal feeling, as far as I can judge, seems to be, +not 'how hardly shall they who have,' but how hardly shall they who have +_not_, 'riches, enter into the kingdom of heaven!'" + +"Upon my word," said he, laughing, "I did not give you credit for so much +eloquence: you seem to have studied the Bible to some purpose, too. I +didn't think that so much Radicalism could be squeezed out of a few texts +of Scripture. It's quite a new light to me. I'll just mark that card, and +play it when I get a convenient opportunity. It may be a winning one in +these democratic times." + +And he did play it, as I heard hereafter; but at present he seemed to +think that the less that was said further on clerical subjects the better, +and commenced quizzing the people whom we passed, humorously and neatly +enough; while I walked on in silence, and thought of Mr. Bye-Ends, in the +"Pilgrim's Progress." And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He +was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all +the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what +was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the +confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own +heart, much less in that of another? + +The dean was not at home that day, having left town on business. George +nodded familiarly to the footman who opened the door. + +"You'll mind and send me word the moment your master comes home--mind now!" + +The fellow promised obedience, and we walked away. + +"You seem to be very intimate here," said I, "with all parties?" + +"Oh! footmen are useful animals--a half-sovereign now and then is not +altogether thrown away upon them. But as for the higher powers, it is very +easy to make oneself at home in the dean's study, but not so much so as +to get a footing in the drawing-room above. I suspect he keeps a precious +sharp eye upon the fair Miss Lillian." + +"But," I asked, as a jealous pang shot through my heart, "how did you +contrive to get this same footing at all? When I met you at Cambridge, you +seemed already well acquainted with these people." + +"How?--how does a hound get a footing on a cold scent? By working and +casting about and about, and drawing on it inch by inch, as I drew on them +for years, my boy; and cold enough the scent was. You recollect that day +at the Dulwich Gallery? I tried to see the arms on the carriage, but there +were none; so that cock wouldn't fight." + +"The arms! I should never have thought of such a plan." + +"Dare say you wouldn't. Then I harked back to the doorkeeper, while you +were St. Sebastianizing. He didn't know their names, or didn't choose to +show me their ticket, on which it ought to have been; so I went to one of +the fellows whom I knew, and got him to find out. There comes out the value +of money--for money makes acquaintances. Well, I found who they were.--Then +I saw no chance of getting at them. But for the rest of that year at +Cambridge, I beat every bush in the university, to find some one who +knew them; and as fortune favours the brave, at last I hit off this Lord +Lynedale; and he, of course, was the ace of trumps--a fine catch in +himself, and a double catch because he was going to marry the cousin. So I +made a dead set at him; and tight work I had to nab him, I can tell you, +for he was three or four years older than I, and had travelled a good deal, +and seen life. But every man has his weak side; and I found his was a sort +of a High-Church Radicalism, and that suited me well enough, for I was +always a deuce of a radical myself; so I stuck to him like a leech, and +stood all his temper, and his pride, and those unpractical, windy visions +of his, that made a common-sense fellow like me sick to listen to; but I +stood it, and here I am." + +"And what on earth induced you to stoop to all this--" meanness I was on +the point of saying. "Surely you are in no want of money--your father could +buy you a good living to-morrow." + +"And he will, but not the one I want; and he could not buy me reputation, +power, rank, do you see, Alton, my genius? And what's more, he couldn't buy +me a certain little tit-bit, a jewel, worth a Jew's eye and a half, Alton, +that I set my heart on from the first moment I set my eye on it." + +My heart beat fast and fierce, but he ran on-- + +"Do you think I'd have eaten all this dirt if it hadn't lain in my way to +her? Eat dirt! I'd drink blood, Alton--though I don't often deal in strong +words--if it lay in that road. I never set my heart on a thing yet, that +I didn't get it at last by fair means or foul--and I'll get her! I don't +care for her money, though that's a pretty plum. Upon my life, I don't. I +worship her, limbs and eyes. I worship the very ground she treads on. She's +a duck and a darling," said he, smacking his lips like an Ogre over his +prey, "and I'll have her before I've done, so help me--" + +"Whom do you mean?" I stammered out. + +"Lillian, you blind beetle." + +I dropped his arm--"Never, as I live!" + +He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh. + +"Hullo! my eye and Betty Martin! You don't mean to say that I have the +honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin?" + +I made no answer. + +"Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You and I are very +good friends, and we may help each other, if we choose, like kith and kin +in this here wale. So if you're fool enough to quarrel with me, I warn you +I'm not fool enough to return the compliment. Only" (lowering his voice), +"just bear one little thing in mind--that I am, unfortunately, of a +somewhat determined humour; and if folks will get in my way, why it's not +my fault if I drive over them. You understand? Well, if you intend to be +sulky, I don't. So good morning, till you feel yourself better." + +And he turned gaily down a side-street and disappeared, looking taller, +handsomer, manfuller than ever. + +I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival, but a +tyrant; and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can +inspire. The eleven pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four +pounds was the utmost which I had been able to hoard up that autumn, by +dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no chance of profit from my book +for months to come--if indeed it ever got published, which I hardly dare +believe it would; and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor +delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I dared even +to seem an obstacle in his way. + +I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to direct my +thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror and degradation +crushed me. Day after day I sat over the fire, and jumped up and went into +the shop, to find something which I did not want, and peep listlessly into +a dozen books, one after the other, and then wander back again to the +fireside, to sit mooning and moping, starting at that horrible incubus of +debt--a devil which may give mad strength to the strong, but only paralyses +the weak. And I was weak, as every poet is, more or less. There was in me, +as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets, that feminine vein--a +receptive as well as a creative faculty--which kept up in me a continual +thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And here was circumstance after +circumstance goading me onward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual +wanderings, never ceasing exertions; every hour calling on me to do, while +I was only longing to be--to sit and observe, and fancy, and build freely +at my own will. And then--as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion +was not in itself sufficient torment--to have that accursed debt--that +knowledge that I was in a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before +me, to cripple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions +to which it compelled me! I hated the bustle--the crowds; the ceaseless +roar of the street outside maddened me. I longed in vain for peace--for one +day's freedom--to be one hour a shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the +blue sky, without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting! "Oh! +that I had wings as a dove!--then would I flee away, and be at rest!"-- + +And then, more than once or twice either, the thoughts of suicide crossed +me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last +chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away +the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralysed me again; +for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance +of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful +sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice +of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how +I had betrayed my suffering brothers.--How, for the sake of vanity and +patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights--their +wrongs. And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy--"a +double-minded man, unstable in all his ways?" + +At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterwards, had been watching all along +my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that +whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first +impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my +pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my +lips. But now this fresh discovery--the knowledge that it was not only in +my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so--had utterly +unmanned me; and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out +came the truth with tears of bitter shame. + +The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table +drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers. + +"No! no! no! best, noblest of friends! I will not burden you with the +fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to gaol sooner +than take your money. If you offer it me I will leave the house, bag and +baggage, this moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution. + +"I havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, deliberately, "seeing +that there's na necessity for paying debits twice owre, when ye ha' the +stampt receipt for them." And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and +rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin. + +Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at +it, looked at him--there was nothing but clear, smiling assurance in his +beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled +off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then +relieved himself by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with +tobacco till he burst the bowl. + +Yes; it was no dream!--the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden +relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner +suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed suddenly to +collapse, and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for +gratitude. + + * * * * * + +But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld +ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a +loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort, +that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his +circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks +back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast +o' phizog," containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the +writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr. +Mackaye, "o' whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess +themselves no that ignorant," should write to George, ascertain the sum, +and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, +when he thought fit--"Sae there's the remnant--aucht pounds, sax shillings, +an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters anent the +same transaction." + +"But what sort of handwriting was it?" asked I, almost disregarding the +welcome coin. + +"Ou, then--aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was no chirographosophic +himsel--an' he had na curiosity anent ony sic passage o' aristocratic +romance." + +"But what was the postmark of the letter?" + +"Why for suld I speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown, +they'd ha' sign't their names upon the document. An' gin they didna sae +intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers +an' seals?" + +"But where is the cover?" + +"Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o' +geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare +it up--aiblins for pipe-lights--I canna mind at this time." + +"And why," asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to +confess--"why did you not tell me before?" + +"How wad I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I thocht it no that bad +a lesson for ye, to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms +that break the head--whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the +delights o' spending borrowed siller." + +There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to +work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in +my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale? +or was it--could it be--Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious +that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half a dozen equally +improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true +one; and hoarded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I +should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair. +They were a gift from her--a pledge--the first fruits of--I dare not +confess to myself what. + +Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast +fitting myself for Bedlam; if, indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it +already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten +pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be +correct; but so I did, and so I suffered. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +A TRUE NOBLEMAN. + + +At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poems actually in +the press. Oh! the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of +proofs! And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever +did in manuscript!--One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly +at a glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after +line, and sentence after sentence.--There was only one drawback to my +happiness--Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it. He had never +grumbled at what I considered, and still do consider, my cardinal offence, +the omission of the strong political passages; he seemed, on the contrary, +in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it than otherwise. +It was my publishing at all at which he growled. + +"Ech," he said, "owre young to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the +way o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but +oot he rins cackling wi' the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, +as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I +wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid +either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding an' moss-trooping, an' +rugging an' riving i' the wilderness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' +lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak example too, gin ye were minded, by +Moses, the man o' God, that was joost forty years at the learning o' the +Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life, an' +then fun' to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years +too sune--an' then had forty years mair, after that, o' marching an' +law-giving, an' bearing the burdens o' the people, before he turned poet." + +"Poet, sir! I never saw Moses in that light before." + +"Then ye'll just read the 90th Psalm--'the prayer o' Moses, the man o' +God'--the grandest piece o' lyric, to my taste, that I ever heard o' on the +face o' God's earth, an' see what a man can write that'll have the patience +to wait a century or twa before he rins to the publisher's. I gie ye up +fra' this moment; the letting out o' ink is like the letting out o' waters, +or the eating o' opium, or the getting up at public meetings.--When a man +begins he canna stop. There's nae mair enslaving lust o' the flesh under +the heaven than that same _furor scribendi_, as the Latins hae it." + +But at last my poems were printed, and bound, and actually published, and +I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got +into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed +in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed +into a grin, when his oracle, the _Spectator_, the only honest paper, +according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after asserting +its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, +grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes--I was a real +live author at last, and signed myself, by special request, in the * * * * +Magazine, as "the author of Songs of the Highways." At last it struck me, +and Mackaye too, who, however he hated flunkeydom, never overlooked an act +of discourtesy, that it would be right for me to call upon the dean, and +thank him formally for all the real kindness he had shown me. So I went to +the handsome house off Harley-street, and was shown into his study, and saw +my own book lying on the table, and was welcomed by the good old man, and +congratulated on my success, and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in +"yielding to more experienced opinions than my own, and submitting to a +censorship which, however severe it might have appeared at first, was, as +the event proved, benignant both in its intentions and effects?" + +And then I was asked, even I, to breakfast there the next morning. And I +went, and found no one there but some scientific gentlemen, to whom I was +introduced as "the young man whose poems we were talking of last night." +And Lillian sat at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee and +tea. And between ecstasy at seeing her, and the intense relief of not +finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there, I sat in a delirium of +silent joy, stealing glances at her beauty, and listening with all my ears +to the conversation, which turned upon the new-married couple. + +I heard endless praises, to which I could not but assent in silence, of +Lord Ellerton's perfections. His very personal appearance had been enough +to captivate my fancy; and then they went on to talk of his magnificent +philanthropic schemes, and his deep sense, of the high duties of a +landlord; and how, finding himself, at his father's death, the possessor of +two vast but neglected estates, he had sold one in order to be able to do +justice to the other, instead of laying house to house, and field to field, +like most of his compeers, "till he stood alone in the land, and there was +no place left;" and how he had lowered his rents, even though it had forced +him to put down the ancestral pack of hounds, and live in a corner of the +old castle; and how he was draining, claying, breaking up old moorlands, +and building churches, and endowing schools, and improving cottages; +and how he was expelling the old ignorant bankrupt race of farmers, and +advertising everywhere for men of capital, and science, and character, who +would have courage to cultivate flax and silk, and try every species of +experiment; and how he had one scientific farmer after another, staying in +his house as a friend; and how he had numbers of his books rebound in plain +covers, that he might lend them to every one on his estate who wished to +read them; and how he had thrown open his picture gallery, not only to the +inhabitants of the neighbouring town, but what (strange to say) seemed to +strike the party as still more remarkable, to the labourers of his own +village; and how he was at that moment busy transforming an old unoccupied +manor-house into a great associate farm, in which all the labourers were +to live under one roof, with a common kitchen and dining-hall, clerks and +superintendents, whom they were to choose, subject only to his approval, +and all of them, from the least to the greatest, have their own interest +in the farm, and be paid by percentage on the profits; and how he had one +of the first political economists of the day staying with him, in order to +work out for him tables of proportionate remuneration, applicable to such +an agricultural establishment; and how, too, he was giving the spade-labour +system a fair-trial, by laying out small cottage-farms, on rocky knolls and +sides of glens, too steep to be cultivated by the plough; and was locating +on them the most intelligent artisans whom he could draft from the +manufacturing town hard by-- + +And at that notion, my brain grew giddy with the hope of seeing myself one +day in one of those same cottages, tilling the earth, under God's sky, and +perhaps--. And then a whole cloud-world of love, freedom, fame, simple, +graceful country luxury steamed up across my brain, to end--not, like the +man's in the "Arabian Nights," in my kicking over the tray of China, which +formed the base-point of my inverted pyramid of hope--but in my finding the +contents of my plate deposited in my lap, while I was gazing fixedly at +Lillian. + +I must say for myself, though, that such accidents happened seldom; whether +it was bashfulness, or the tact which generally, I believe, accompanies +a weak and nervous body, and an active mind; or whether it was that I +possessed enough relationship to the monkey-tribe to make me a first-rate +mimic, I used to get tolerably well through on these occasions, by acting +on the golden rule of never doing anything which I had not seen some one +else do first--a rule which never brought me into any greater scrape than +swallowing something intolerably hot, sour, and nasty (whereof I never +discovered the name), because I had seen the dean do so a moment before. + +But one thing struck me through the whole of this conversation--the way in +which the new-married Lady Ellerton was spoken of, as aiding, encouraging, +originating--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide, for her husband--in all +these noble plans. She had already acquainted herself with every woman on +the estate; she was the dispenser, not merely of alms--for those seemed a +disagreeable necessity, from which Lord Ellerton was anxious to escape as +soon as possible--but of advice, comfort, and encouragement. She not only +visited the sick, and taught in the schools--avocations which, thank God, +I have reason to believe are matters of course, not only in the families +of clergymen, but those of most squires and noblemen, when they reside on +their estates--but seemed, from the hints which I gathered, to be utterly +devoted, body and soul, to the welfare of the dwellers on her husband's +land. + +"I had no notion," I dared at last to remark, humbly enough, "that +Miss--Lady Ellerton cared so much for the people." + +"Really! One feels inclined sometimes to wish that she cared for anything +beside them," said Lillian, half to her father and half to me. + +This gave a fresh shake to my estimate of that remarkable woman's +character. But still, who could be prouder, more imperious, more abrupt in +manner, harsh, even to the very verge of good-breeding? (for I had learnt +what good-breeding was, from the debating society as well as from the +drawing-room;) and, above all, had she not tried to keep me from Lillian? +But these cloudy thoughts melted rapidly away in that sunny atmosphere of +success and happiness, and I went home as merry as a bird, and wrote all +the morning more gracefully and sportively, as I fancied, than I had ever +yet done. + +But my bliss did not end here. In a week or so, behold one morning a +note--written, indeed, by the dean--but directed in Lillian's own hand, +inviting me to come there to tea, that I might see a few, of the literary +characters of the day. + +I covered the envelope with kisses, and thrust it next my fluttering heart. +I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye. He looked pleased, yet pensive, +and then broke out with a fresh adaptation of his favourite song, + + --and shovel hats and a' that-- + A man's a man for a' that. + +"The auld gentleman is a man and a gentleman; an' has made a verra +courteous, an' weel considerit move, gin ye ha' the sense to profit by it, +an' no turn it to yer ain destruction." + +"Destruction?" + +"Ay--that's the word, an' nothing less, laddie!" + +And he went into the outer shop, and returned with a volume of Bulwer's +"Ernest Maltravers." + +"What! are you a novel reader, Mr. Mackaye?" + +"How do ye ken what I may ha' thocht gude to read in my time? Yell be +pleased the noo to sit down an' begin at that page--an read, mark, learn, +an' inwardly digest, the history of Castruccio Cesarini--an' the gude God +gie ye grace to lay the same to heart." + +I read that fearful story; and my heart sunk, and my eyes were full of +tears, long ere I had finished it. Suddenly I looked up at Mackaye, half +angry at the pointed allusion to my own case. + +The old man was watching me intently, with folded hands, and a smile of +solemn interest and affection worthy of Socrates himself. He turned his +head as I looked up, but his lips kept moving. I fancied, I know not why, +that he was praying for me. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +THE TRIUMPHANT AUTHOR. + + +So to the party I went, and had the delight of seeing and hearing the men +with whose names I had been long acquainted, as the leaders of scientific +discovery in this wondrous age; and more than one poet, too, over whose +works I had gloated, whom I had worshipped in secret. Intense was the +pleasure of now realizing to myself, as living men, wearing the same flesh +and blood as myself, the names which had been to me mythic ideas. Lillian +was there among them, more exquisite than ever; but even she at first +attracted my eyes and thoughts less than did the truly great men around +her. I hung on every word they spoke, I watched every gesture, as if they +must have some deep significance; the very way in which they drank their +coffee was a matter of interest to me. I was almost disappointed to see +them eat and chat like common men. I expected that pearls and diamonds +would drop from their lips, as they did from those of the girl, in the +fairy-tale, every time they opened their mouths; and certainly, the +conversation that evening was a new world to me--though I could only, of +course, be a listener. Indeed, I wished to be nothing more. I felt that +I was taking my place there among the holy guild of authors--that I too, +however humbly, had a thing to say, and had said it; and I was content to +sit on the lowest step of the literary temple, without envy for those elder +and more practised priests of wisdom, who had earned by long labour the +freedom of the inner shrine. I should have been quite happy enough standing +there, looking and listening--but I was at last forced to come forward. +Lillian was busy chatting with grave, grey-headed men, who seemed as ready +to flirt, and pet and admire the lovely little fairy, as if they had been +as young and gay as herself. It was enough for me to see her appreciated +and admired. I loved them for smiling on her, for handing her from her seat +to the piano with reverent courtesy: gladly would I have taken their place: +I was content, however, to be only a spectator; for it was not my rank, but +my youth, I was glad to fancy, which denied me that blissful honour. But +as she sang, I could not help stealing up to the piano; and, feasting my +greedy eyes with every motion of those delicious lips, listen and listen, +entranced, and living only in that melody. + +Suddenly, after singing two or three songs, she began fingering the keys, +and struck into an old air, wild and plaintive, rising and falling like the +swell of an Æolian harp upon a distant breeze. + +"Ah! now," she said, "if I could get words for that! What an exquisite +lament somebody might write to it, if they could only thoroughly take in +the feeling and meaning of it." + +"Perhaps," I said, humbly, "that is the only way to write songs--to let +some air get possession of ones whole soul, and gradually inspire the words +for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them, to +wake up the prophetic spirit within them." + +She looked up, just as if she had been unconscious of my presence till that +moment. + +"Ah! Mr. Locke!--well, if you understand my meaning so thoroughly, perhaps +you will try and write some words for me." + +"I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the meaning of the air." + +"Oh! then, listen while I play it over again. I am sure _you_ ought to +appreciate anything so sad and tender." + +And she did play it, to my delight, over again, even more gracefully and +carefully than before--making the inarticulate sounds speak a mysterious +train of thoughts and emotions. It is strange how little real intellect, in +women especially, is required for an exquisite appreciation of the beauties +of music--perhaps, because it appeals to the heart and not the head. + +She rose and left the piano, saying archly, "Now, don't forget your +promise;" and I, poor fool, my sunlight suddenly withdrawn, began torturing +my brains on the instant to think of a subject. + +As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to +me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, +which hung on the wall--a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a +line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind--a grey shroud of rain sweeping +up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays +of the setting sun--a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through +shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides +glittering in one long line of level light. + +They seemed thoroughly conversant with art; and as I listened to their +criticisms, I learnt more in five minutes about the characteristics of +a really true and good picture, and about the perfection to which our +unrivalled English landscape-painters have attained, than I ever did from +all the books and criticisms which I had read. One of them had seen the +spot represented, at the mouth of the Dee, and began telling wild stories +of salmon-fishing, and wildfowl shooting--and then a tale of a girl, who, +in bringing her father's cattle home across the sands, had been caught by +a sudden flow of the tide, and found next day a corpse hanging among the +stake-nets far below. The tragedy, the art of the picture, the simple, +dreary grandeur of the scenery, took possession of me; and I stood gazing +a long time, and fancying myself pacing the sands, and wondering whether +there were shells upon it--I had often longed for once only in my life to +pick up shells--when Lady Ellerton, whom I had not before noticed, woke me +from my reverie. + +I took the liberty of asking after Lord Ellerton. + +"He is not in town--he has stayed behind for one day to attend a great +meeting of his tenantry--you will see the account in the papers to-morrow +morning--he comes to-morrow." And as she spoke her whole face and figure +seemed to glow and heave, in spite of herself, with pride and affection. + +"And now, come with me, Mr. Locke--the * * * ambassador wishes to speak to +you." + +"The * * * ambassador!" I said, startled; for let us be as democratic as we +will, there is something in the name of great officers which awes, perhaps +rightly, for the moment, and it requires a strong act of self-possession +to recollect that "a man's a man for a' that." Besides, I knew enough of +the great man in question to stand in awe of him for his own sake, having +lately read a panegyric of him, which perfectly astounded me, by its +description of his piety and virtue, his family affection, and patriarchal +simplicity, the liberality and philanthropy of all his measures, and the +enormous intellectual powers, and stores of learning, which enabled him, +with the affairs of Europe on his shoulders, to write deeply and originally +on the most abstruse questions of theology, history, and science. + +Lady Ellerton seemed to guess my thoughts. "You need not be afraid of +meeting an aristocrat, in the vulgar sense of the word. You will see one +who, once perhaps as unknown as yourself, has risen by virtue and wisdom to +guide the destinies of nations--and shall I tell you how? Not by fawning +and yielding to the fancies of the great; not by compromising his own +convictions to suit their prejudices--" + +I felt the rebuke, but she went on-- + +"He owes his greatness to having dared, one evening, to contradict a +crown-prince to his face, and fairly conquer him in argument, and thereby +bind the truly royal heart to him for ever." + +"There are few scions of royalty to whose favour that would be a likely +path." + +"True; and therefore the greater honour is due to the young student who +could contradict, and the prince who could be contradicted." + +By this time we had arrived in the great man's presence; he was sitting +with a little circle round him, in the further drawing-room, and certainly +I never saw a nobler specimen of humanity. I felt myself at once before a +hero--not of war and bloodshed, but of peace and civilization; his portly +and ample figure, fair hair and delicate complexion, and, above all, +the benignant calm of his countenance, told of a character gentle and +genial--at peace with himself and all the world; while the exquisite +proportion of his chiselled and classic features, the lofty and ample +brain, and the keen, thoughtful eye, bespoke, at the first glance, +refinement and wisdom-- + + The reason firm, the temperate will-- + Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. + +I am not ashamed to say, Chartist as I am, that I felt inclined to fall +upon my knees, and own a master of God's own making. + +He received my beautiful guide with a look of chivalrous affection, which +I observed that she returned with interest; and then spoke in a voice +peculiarly bland and melodious: + +"So, my dear lady, this is the _protégé_ of whom you have so often spoken?" + +So she had often spoken of me! Blind fool that I was, I only took it in as +food for my own self-conceit, that my enemy (for so I actually fancied her) +could not help praising me. + +"I have read your little book, sir," he said, in the same soft, benignant +voice, "with very great pleasure. It is another proof, if I required any, +of the under-current of living and healthful thought which exists even in +the less-known ranks of your great nation. I shall send it to some young +friends of mine in Germany, to show them that Englishmen can feel acutely +and speak boldly on the social evils of their country, without indulging +in that frantic and bitter revolutionary spirit, which warps so many young +minds among us. You understand the German language at all?" + +I had not that honour. + +"Well, you must learn it. We have much to teach you in the sphere of +abstract thought, as you have much to teach us in those of the practical +reason and the knowledge of mankind. I should be glad to see you some +day in a German university. I am anxious to encourage a truly spiritual +fraternization between the two great branches of the Teutonic stock, by +welcoming all brave young English spirits to their ancient fatherland. +Perhaps hereafter your kind friends here will be able to lend you to me. +The means are easy, thank God! You will find in the Germans true brothers, +in ways even more practical than sympathy and affection." + +I could not but thank the great man, with many blushes, and went home that +night utterly _"tête montée,"_ as I believe the French phrase is--beside +myself with gratified vanity and love; to lie sleepless under a severe fit +of asthma--sent perhaps as a wholesome chastisement to cool my excited +spirits down to something like a rational pitch. As I lay castle-building, +Lillian's wild air rang still in my ears, and combined itself somehow with +that picture of the Cheshire sands, and the story of the drowned girl, +till it shaped itself into a song, which, as it is yet unpublished, and +as I have hitherto obtruded little or nothing of my own composition on my +readers, I may be excused for inserting it here. + + I. + + "O Mary, go and call the cattle home, + And call the cattle home, + And call the cattle home, + Across the sands o' Dee;" + The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam, + And all alone went she. + + II. + + The creeping tide came up along the sand, + And o'er and o'er the sand, + And round and round the sand, + As far as eye could see; + The blinding mist came down and hid the land-- + And never home came she. + + III. + + "Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- + A tress o' golden hair, + O' drowned maiden's hair, + Above the nets at sea? + Was never salmon yet that shone so fair, + Among the stakes on Dee." + + IV. + + They rowed her in across the rolling foam, + The cruel crawling foam, + The cruel hungry foam, + To her grave beside the sea: + But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home, + Across the sands o' Dee. + +There--let it go!--it was meant as an offering for one whom it never +reached. + +About mid-day I took my way towards the dean's house, to thank him for +his hospitality--and, I need not say, to present my offering at my idol's +shrine; and as I went, I conned over a dozen complimentary speeches about +Lord Ellerton's wisdom, liberality, eloquence--but behold! the shutters of +the house were closed. What could be the matter? It was full ten minutes +before the door was opened; and then, at last, an old woman, her eyes +red with weeping, made her appearance. My thoughts flew instantly to +Lillian--something must have befallen her. I gasped out her name first, and +then, recollecting myself, asked for the dean. + +"They had all left town that morning," + +"Miss--Miss Winnstay--is she ill?" + +"No." + +"Thank God!" I breathed freely again. What matter what happened to all the +world beside? + +"Ay, thank God, indeed; but poor Lord Ellerton was thrown from his horse +last night and brought home dead. A messenger came here by six this +morning, and they're all gone off to * * * *. Her ladyship's raving +mad.--And no wonder." And she burst out crying afresh, and shut the door in +my face. + +Lord Ellerton dead! and Lillian gone too! Something whispered that I should +have cause to remember that day. My heart sunk within me. When should I see +her again? + +That day was the 1st of June, 1845. On the 10th of April, 1848, I saw +Lillian Winnstay again. Dare I write my history between those two points of +time? Yes, even that must be done, for the sake of the rich who read, and +the poor who suffer. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +THE PLUSH BREECHES TRAGEDY. + + +My triumph had received a cruel check enough when just at its height, and +more were appointed to follow. Behold! some two days after, another--all +the more bitter, because my conscience whispered that it was not altogether +undeserved. The people's press had been hitherto praising and petting me +lovingly enough. I had been classed (and heaven knows that the comparison +was dearer to me than all the applause of the wealthy) with the Corn-Law +Rhymer, and the author of the "Purgatory of Suicides." My class had claimed +my talents as their own--another "voice fresh from the heart of nature," +another "untutored songster of the wilderness," another "prophet arisen +among the suffering millions,"--when, one day, behold in Mr. O'Flynn's +paper a long and fierce attack on me, my poems, my early history! How he +could have got at some of the facts there mentioned, how he could have +dared to inform his readers that I had broken my mother's heart by my +misconduct, I cannot conceive; unless my worthy brother-in-law, the Baptist +preacher, had been kind enough to furnish him with the materials. But +however that may be, he showed me no mercy. I was suddenly discovered to be +a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat. Such paltry talent as I had, +I had prostituted for the sake of fame. I had deserted The People's Cause +for filthy lucre--an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with +withering scorn--_in print_. Nay, more, I would write, and notoriously did +write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical, where I could earn a shilling +by an enormous gooseberry, or a scrap of private slander. And the working +men were solemnly warned to beware of me and my writings, till the editor +had further investigated certain ugly facts in my history, which he would +in due time report to his patriotic and enlightened readers. + +All this stung me in the most sensitive nerve of my whole heart, for I +knew that I could not altogether exculpate myself; and to that miserable +certainty was added the dread of some fresh exposure. Had he actually heard +of the omissions in my poems?--and if he once touched on that subject, +what could I answer? Oh! how bitterly now I felt the force of the critic's +careless lash! The awful responsibility of those written words, which +we bandy about so thoughtlessly! How I recollected now, with shame and +remorse, all the hasty and cruel utterances to which I, too, had given +vent against those who had dared to differ from me; the harsh, one-sided +judgments, the reckless imputations of motive, the bitter sneers, +"rejoicing in evil rather than in the truth." How I, too, had longed to +prove my victims in the wrong, and turned away, not only lazily, but +angrily, from many an exculpatory fact! And here was my Nemesis come at +last. As I had done unto others, so it was done unto me! + +It was right that it should be so. However indignant, mad, almost +murderous, I felt at the time, I thank God for it now. It is good to be +punished in kind. It is good to be made to feel what we have made others +feel. It is good--anything is good, however bitter, which shows us that +there is such a law as retribution; that we are not the sport of blind +chance or a triumphant fiend, but that there is a God who judges the +earth--righteous to repay every man according to his works. + +But at the moment I had no such ray of comfort--and, full of rage and +shame, I dashed the paper down before Mackaye. "How shall I answer him? +What shall I say?" + +The old man read it all through, with a grim saturnine smile. + +"Hoolie, hoolie, speech, is o' silver--silence is o' gold says Thomas +Carlyle, anent this an' ither matters. Wha'd be fashed wi' sic blethers? +Ye'll just abide patient, and haud still in the Lord, until this tyranny be +owerpast. Commit your cause to him, said the auld Psalmist, an' he'll mak +your righteousness as clear as the light, an' your just dealing as the +noonday." + +"But I must explain; I owe it as a duty to myself; I must refute these +charges; I must justify myself to our friends." + +"Can ye do that same, laddie?" asked he, with one of his quaint, searching +looks. Somehow I blushed, and could not altogether meet his eye, while he +went on, "--An' gin ye could, whaur would ye do 't? I ken na periodical +whar the editor will gie ye a clear stage an' no favour to bang him ower +the lugs." + +"Then I will try some other paper." + +"An' what for then? They that read him, winna read the ither; an' they that +read the ither, winna read him. He has his ain set o' dupes like every +ither editor; an' ye mun let him gang his gate, an' feed his ain kye with +his ain hay. He'll no change it for your bidding." + +"What an abominable thing this whole business of the press is then, if each +editor is to be allowed to humbug his readers at his pleasure, without a +possibility of exposing or contradicting him!" + +"An' ye've just spoken the truth, laddie. There's na mair accursed +inquisition, than this of thae self-elected popes, the editors. That +puir auld Roman ane, ye can bring him forat when ye list, bad as he +is. 'Fænum habet in cornu;' his name's ower his shop-door. But these +anonymies--priests o' the order of Melchisedec by the deevil's side, +without father or mither, beginning o' years nor end o' days--without a +local habitation or a name-as kittle to baud as a brock in a cairn--" + +"What do you mean, Mr. Mackaye?" asked I, for he was getting altogether +unintelligibly Scotch, as was his custom when excited. + +"Ou, I forgot; ye're a puir Southern body, an' no sensible to the +gran' metaphoric powers o' the true Dawric. But it's an accursit state +a'thegither, the noo, this, o' the anonymous press--oreeginally devised, ye +ken, by Balaam the son o' Beor, for serving God wi'out the deevil's finding +it out--an' noo, after the way o' human institutions, translated ower +to help folks to serve the deevil without God's finding it out. I'm no' +astonished at the puir expiring religious press for siccan a fa'; but for +the working men to be a' that's bad--it's grewsome to behold. I'll tell ye +what, my bairn, there's na salvation for the workmen, while they defile +themselves this fashion, wi' a' the very idols o' their ain tyrants--wi' +salvation by act o' parliament--irresponsible rights o' property--anonymous +Balaamry--fechtin' that canny auld farrant fiend, Mammon, wi' his ain +weapons--and then a' fleyed, because they get well beaten for their pains. +I'm sair forfaughten this mony a year wi' watching the puir gowks, trying +to do God's wark wi' the deevil's tools. Tak tent o' that." + +And I did "tak tent o' it." Still there would have been as little present +consolation as usual in Mackaye's unwelcome truths, even if the matter had +stopped there. But, alas! it did not stop there. O'Flynn seemed determined +to "run a muck" at me. Every week some fresh attack appeared. The very +passages about the universities and church property, which had caused our +quarrel, were paraded against me, with free additions and comments; and, at +last, to my horror, out came the very story which I had all along dreaded, +about the expurgation of my poems, with the coarsest allusions to petticoat +influence--aristocratic kisses--and the Duchess of Devonshire canvassing +draymen for Fox, &c., &c. How he got a clue to the scandal I cannot +conceive. Mackaye and Crossthwaite, I had thought, were the only souls to +whom I had ever breathed the secret, and they denied indignantly the having +ever betrayed my weakness. How it came out, I say again, I cannot conceive; +except because it is a great everlasting law, and sure to fulfil itself +sooner or later, as we may see by the histories of every remarkable, and +many an unremarkable, man--"There is nothing secret, but it shall be made +manifest; and whatsoever ye have spoken in the closet, shall be proclaimed +upon the house-tops." + +For some time after that last exposure, I was thoroughly crest-fallen--and +not without reason. I had been giving a few lectures among the working men, +on various literary and social subjects. I found my audience decrease--and +those who remained seemed more inclined to hiss than to applaud me. In +vain I ranted and quoted poetry, often more violently than my own opinions +justified. My words touched no responsive chord in my hearers' hearts; they +had lost faith in me. + +At last, in the middle of a lecture on Shelley, I was indulging, and +honestly too, in some very glowing and passionate praise of the true +nobleness of a man, whom neither birth nor education could blind to the +evils of society; who, for the sake of the suffering many, could trample +under foot his hereditary pride, and become an outcast for the People's +Cause. + +I heard a whisper close to me, from one whose opinion I valued, and value +still--a scholar and a poet, one who had tasted poverty, and slander, and a +prison, for The Good Cause: + +"Fine talk: but it's 'all in his day's work.' Will he dare to say that +to-morrow to the ladies at the West-end?" + +No--I should not. I knew it; and at that instant I felt myself a liar, +and stopped short--my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I fumbled +at my papers--clutched the water-tumbler--tried to go on--stopped short +again--caught up my hat, and rushed from the room, amid peals of astonished +laughter. + +It was some months after this that, fancying the storm blown over, I +summoned up courage enough to attend a political meeting of our party; but +even there my Nemesis met full face. After some sanguinary speech, I really +forgot from whom, and, if I recollected, God forbid that I should tell now, +I dared to controvert, mildly enough, Heaven knows, some especially frantic +assertion or other. But before I could get out three sentences, O'Flynn +flew at me with a coarse invective, hounded on, by-the-by, by one who, +calling himself a gentleman, might have been expected to know better. +But, indeed, he and O'Flynn had the same object in view, which was simply +to sell their paper; and as a means to that great end, to pander to the +fiercest passions of their readers, to bully and silence all moderate and +rational Chartists, and pet and tar on the physical-force men, till the +poor fellows began to take them at their word. Then, when it came to deeds +and not to talk, and people got frightened, and the sale of the paper +decreased a little, a blessed change came over them--and they awoke one +morning meeker than lambs; "ulterior measures" had vanished back into +the barbarous ages, pikes, vitriol-bottles, and all; and the public were +entertained with nothing but homilies on patience and resignation, the +"triumphs of moral justice," the "omnipotence of public opinion," and the +"gentle conquests of fraternal love"--till it was safe to talk treason and +slaughter again. + +But just then treason happened to be at a premium. Sedition, which had been +floundering on in a confused, disconsolate, underground way ever since +1842, was supposed by the public to be dead; and for that very reason it +was safe to talk it, or, at least, back up those who chose to do so. And +so I got no quarter--though really, if the truth must be told, I had said +nothing unreasonable. + +Home I went disgusted, to toil on at my hack-writing, only praying that I +might be let alone to scribble in peace, and often thinking, sadly, how +little my friends in Harley-street could guess at the painful experience, +the doubts, the struggles, the bitter cares, which went to the making of +the poetry which they admired so much! + +I was not, however, left alone to scribble in peace, either by O'Flynn or +by his readers, who formed, alas! just then, only too large a portion of +the thinking artizans; every day brought some fresh slight or annoyance +with it, till I received one afternoon, by the Parcels Delivery Company, +a large unpaid packet, containing, to my infinite disgust, an old pair of +yellow plush breeches, with a recommendation to wear them, whose meaning +could not be mistaken. + +Furious, I thrust the unoffending garment into the lire, and held it there +with the tongs, regardless of the horrible smell which accompanied its +martyrdom, till the lady-lodger on the first floor rushed down to inquire +whether the house was on fire. + +I answered by hurling a book at her head, and brought down a volley of +abuse, under which I sat in sulky patience, till Mackaye and Crossthwaite +came in, and found her railing in the doorway, and me sitting over the +fire, still intent on the frizzling remains of the breeches. + +"Was this insult of your invention, Mr. Crossthwaite?" asked I, in a tone +of lofty indignation, holding up the last scrap of unroasted plush. + +Roars of laughter from both of them made me only more frantic, and I broke +out so incoherently, that it was some time before the pair could make out +the cause of my fury. + +"Upon my honour, Locke," quoth John, at last, holding his sides, "I +never sent them; though, on the whole--you've made my stomach ache with +laughing. I can't speak. But you must expect a joke or two, after your late +fashionable connexions." + +I stood, still and white with rage. + +"Really, my good fellow, how can you wonder if our friends suspect you? +Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and The +Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected +our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? And can +you expect to eat your cake and keep it too? You must be one thing or the +other; and, though Sandy, here, is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have +disappointed us both miserably--and there's the long and short of it." + +I hid my face in my hands, and sat moodily over the fire; my conscience +told me that I had nothing to answer. + +"Whisht, Johnnie! Ye're ower sair on the lad. He's a' right at heart still, +an he'll do good service. But the deevil a'ways fechts hardest wi' them +he's maist 'feard of. What's this anent agricultural distress ye had to +tell me the noo?" + +"There is a rising down in the country, a friend of mine writes me. The +people are starving, not because bread is dear, but because it's cheap; +and, like sensible men, they're going to have a great meeting, to inquire +the rights and wrong of all that. Now, I want to send a deputation down, to +see how far they are inclined to go, and let them know we up in London are +with them. And then we might get up a corresponding association, you know. +It's a great opening for spreading the principles of the Charter." + +"I sair misdoubt, it's just bread they'll be wanting, they labourers, mair +than liberty. Their God is their belly, I'm thinking, and a verra poor +empty idol he is the noo; sma' burnt offerings and fat o' rams he gets to +propitiate him. But ye might send down a canny body, just to spy out the +nakedness o' the land." + +"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see that I do care for The +Cause. If it's a dangerous mission, so much the better. It will prove my +sincerity. Where is the place?" + +"About ten miles from D * * * *." + +"D * * * *!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot in England! But +it was too late to retract. Sandy saw what was the matter, and tried to +turn the subject; but I was peremptory, almost rude with him. I felt I must +keep up my present excitement, or lose my heart, and my caste, for ever; +and as the hour for the committee was at hand, I jumped up and set off +thither with them, whether they would or not. I heard Sandy whisper to +Crossthwaite, and turned quite fiercely on him. + +"If you want to speak about me, speak out. If you fancy that I shall let my +connexion with that place" (I could not bring myself to name it) "stand in +the way of my duty, you do not know me." + +I announced my intention at the meeting. It was at first received coldly; +but I spoke energetically--perhaps, as some told me afterwards, actually +eloquently. When I got heated, I alluded to my former stay at D * * * *, +and said (while my heart sunk at the bravado which I was uttering) that I +should consider it a glory to retrieve my character with them, and devote +myself to the cause of the oppressed, in the very locality whence had first +arisen their unjust and pardonable suspicions. In short, generous, trusting +hearts as they were, and always are, I talked them round; they shook me by +the hand one by one, bade me God speed, told me that I stood higher than +ever in their eyes, and then set to work to vote money from their funds for +my travelling expenses, which I magnanimously refused, saying that I had a +pound or two left from the sale of my poems, and that I must be allowed, as +an act of repentance and restitution, to devote it to The Cause. + +My triumph was complete. Even O'Flynn, who, like all Irishmen, had plenty +of loose good-nature at bottom, and was as sudden and furious in his loves +as in his hostilities, scrambled over the benches, regardless of patriots' +toes, to shake me violently by the hand, and inform me that I was "a broth +of a boy," and that "any little disagreements between us had vanished like +a passing cloud from the sunshine of our fraternity"--when my eye was +caught by a face which there was no mistaking--my cousin's! + +Yes, there he sat, watching me like a basilisk, with his dark, glittering, +mesmeric eyes, out of a remote corner of the room--not in contempt or +anger, but there was a quiet, assured, sardonic smile about his lips, which +chilled me to the heart. + +The meeting was sufficiently public to allow of his presence, but how had +he found out its existence? Had he come there as a spy on me? Had he been +in the room when my visit to D * * * * was determined on? I trembled at the +thought; and I trembled, too, lest he should be daring enough--and I knew +he could dare anything--to claim acquaintance with me there and then. It +would have ruined my new-restored reputation for ever. But he sat still and +steady: and I had to go through the rest of the evening's business under +the miserable, cramping knowledge that every word and gesture was being +noted down by my most deadly enemy; trembling whenever I was addressed, +lest some chance word of an acquaintance would implicate me still +further--though, indeed, I was deep enough already. The meeting seemed +interminable; and there I fidgeted, with my face scarlet--always seeing +those basilisk eyes upon me--in fancy--for I dared not look again towards +the corner where I knew they were. + +At last it was over--the audience went out; and when I had courage to look +round, my cousin had vanished among them. A load was taken off my breast, +and I breathed freely again--for five minutes;--for I had not made ten +steps up the street, when an arm was familiarly thrust through mine, and I +found myself in the clutches of my evil genius. + +"How are you, my dear fellow? Expected to meet you there. Why, what an +orator you are! Really, I haven't heard more fluent or passionate English +this month of Sundays. You must give me a lesson in sermon-preaching. I can +tell you, we parsons want a hint or two in that line. So you're going down +to D * * * *, to see after those poor starving labourers? 'Pon my honour, +I've a great mind to go with you." + +So, then, he knew all! However, there was nothing for it but to brazen +it out; and, besides, I was in his power, and however hateful to me his +seeming cordiality might be, I dared not offend him at that moment. + +"It would be well if you did. If you parsons would show yourselves at such +places as these a little oftener, you would do more to make the people +believe your mission real, than by all the tracts and sermons in the +world." + +"But, my dear cousin" (and he began to snuffle and sink his voice), "there +is so much sanguinary language, so much unsanctified impatience, you +frighten away all the meek apostolic men among the priesthood--the very +ones who feel most for the lost sheep of the flock. + +"Then the parsons are either great Pharisees or great cowards, or both." + +"Very likely. I was in a precious fright myself, I know, when I saw you +recognized me. If I had not felt strengthened, you know, as of course one +ought to be in all trials, by the sense of my holy calling, I think I +should have bolted at once. However, I took the precaution of bringing my +Bowie and revolver with me, in case the worst came to the worst." + +"And a very needless precaution it was," said I, half laughing at the +quaint incongruity of the priestly and the lay elements in his speech. "You +don't seem to know much of working men's meetings, or working men's morals. +Why, that place was open to all the world. The proceedings will be in the +newspaper to-morrow. The whole bench of bishops might have been there, if +they had chosen; and a great deal of good it would have done them!" + +"I fully agree with you, my dear fellow. No one hates the bishops more than +we true high-churchmen, I can tell you--that's a great point of sympathy +between us and the people. But I must be off. By-the-by, would you like me +to tell our friends at D * * * * that I met you? They often ask after you +in their letters, I assure you." + +This was a sting of complicated bitterness. I felt all that it meant at +once. So he was in constant correspondence with them, while I--and that +thought actually drove out of my head the more pressing danger of his +utterly ruining me in their esteem, by telling them, as he had a very good +right to do, that I was going to preach Chartism to discontented mobs. + +"Ah! well! perhaps you wouldn't wish it mentioned? As you like, you +know. Or, rather," and he laid an iron grasp on my arm, and dropped his +voice--this time in earnest--"as you behave, my wise and loyal cousin! Good +night." + +I went home--the excitement of self-applause, which the meeting had called +up, damped by a strange weight of foreboding. And yet I could not help +laughing, when, just as I was turning into bed, Crossthwaite knocked at +my door, and, on being admitted, handed over to me a bundle wrapped up in +paper. + +"There's a pair of breeks for you--not plush ones, this time, old +fellow--but you ought to look as smart as possible. There's so much in a +man's looking dignified, and all that, when he's speechifying. So I've +just brought you down my best black trousers to travel in. We're just of +a size, you know; little and good, like a Welshman's cow. And if you tear +them, why, we're not like poor, miserable, useless aristocrats; tailors +and sailors can mend their own rents." And he vanished, whistling the +"Marseillaise." + +I went to bed and tossed about, fancying to myself my journey, my speech, +the faces of the meeting, among which Lillian's would rise, in spite of all +the sermons which I preached to myself on the impossibility of her being +there, of my being known, of any harm happening from the movement; but I +could not shake off the fear. If there were a riot, a rising!--If any harm +were to happen to her! If--Till, mobbed into fatigue by a rabble of such +miserable hypothetic ghosts, I fell asleep, to dream that I was going to be +hanged for sedition, and that the mob were all staring and hooting at me, +and Lillian clapping her hands and setting them on; and I woke in an agony, +to find Sandy Mackaye standing by my bedside with a light. + +"Hoolie, laddie! ye need na jump up that way. I'm no' gaun to burke ye the +nicht; but I canna sleep; I'm sair misdoubtful o' the thing. It seems a' +richt, an' I've been praying for us, an' that's mickle for me, to be taught +our way; but I dinna see aught for ye but to gang. If your heart is richt +with God in this matter, then he's o' your side, an' I fear na what men may +do to ye. An' yet, ye're my Joseph, as it were, the son o' my auld age, wi' +a coat o' many colours, plush breeks included; an' gin aught take ye, ye'll +bring down my grey haffets wi' sorrow to the grave!" + +The old man gazed at me as be spoke, with a deep, earnest affection I +had never seen in him before; and the tears glistened in his eyes by the +flaring candlelight, as he went on: + +"I ha' been reading the Bible the nicht. It's strange how the words o't +rise up, and open themselves whiles, to puir distractit bodies; though, +maybe, no' always in just the orthodox way. An' I fell on that, 'Behold +I send ye forth as lambs in the midst o' wolves. Be ye therefore wise as +serpents an' harmless as doves;' an' that gave me comfort, laddie, for ye. +Mind the warning, dinna gang wud, whatever ye may see an' hear; it's an +ill way o' showing pity, to gang daft anent it. Dinna talk magniloquently; +that's the workman's darling sin. An' mind ye dinna go too deep wi' them. +Ye canna trust them to understand ye; they're puir foolish sheep that ha' +no shepherd--swine that ha' no wash, rather. So cast na your pearls before +swine, laddie, lest they trample them under their feet, an' turn again an' +rend ye." + +He went out, and I lay awake tossing till morning, making a thousand good +resolutions--like the rest of mankind. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN. + + +With many instructions from our friends, and warnings from Mackaye, I +started next day on my journey. When I last caught sight of the old man, +he was gazing fixedly after me, and using his pocket-handkerchief in a +somewhat suspicious way. I had remarked how depressed he seemed, and my own +spirits shared the depression. A presentiment of evil hung over me, which +not even the excitement of the journey--to me a rare enjoyment--could +dispel. I had no heart, somehow, to look at the country scenes around, +which in general excited in me so much interest, and I tried to lose myself +in summing up my stock of information on the question which I expected to +hear discussed by the labourers. I found myself not altogether ignorant. +The horrible disclosures of S.G.O., and the barbarous abominations of +the Andover Workhouse, then fresh in the public mind, had had their due +effect on mine; and, like most thinking artizans, I had acquainted myself +tolerably from books and newspapers with the general condition of the +country labourers. + +I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, whose broad brown and +grey fields were only broken by an occasional line of dark, doleful firs, +at a knot of thatched hovels, all sinking and leaning every way but the +right, the windows patched with paper, the doorways stopped with filth, +which surrounded a beer-shop. That was my destination--unpromising enough +for any one but an agitator. If discontent and misery are preparatives for +liberty--and they are--so strange and unlike ours are the ways of God--I +was likely enough to find them there. + +I was welcomed by my intended host, a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker, +who greeted me as his cousin from London--a relationship which it seemed +prudent to accept. + +He took me into his little cabin, and there, with the assistance of a +shrewd, good-natured wife, shared with me the best he had; and after supper +commenced, mysteriously and in trembling, as if the very walls might have +ears, a rambling, bitter diatribe on the wrongs and sufferings of the +labourers; which went on till late in the night, and which I shall spare my +readers: for if they have either brains or hearts, they ought to know more +than I can tell them, from the public prints, and, indeed, from their own +eyes--although, as a wise man says, there is nothing more difficult than to +make people see first the facts which lie under their own nose. + +Upon one point, however, which was new to me, he was very fierce--the +customs of landlords letting the cottages with their farms, for the mere +sake of saving themselves trouble; thus giving up all power of protecting +the poor man, and delivering him over, bound hand and foot, even in the +matter of his commonest home comforts, to farmers, too penurious, too +ignorant, and often too poor, to keep the cottages in a state fit for the +habitation of human beings. Thus the poor man's hovel, as well as his +labour, became, he told me, a source of profit to the farmer, out of which +he wrung the last drop of gain. The necessary repairs were always put +off as long as possible--the labourers were robbed of their gardens--the +slightest rebellion lost them not only work, but shelter from the elements; +the slavery under which they groaned penetrated even to the fireside and to +the bedroom. + +"And who was the landlord of this parish?" + +"Oh! he believed he was a very good sort of man, and uncommon kind to the +people where he lived, but that was fifty miles away in another country; +and he liked that estate better than this, and never came down here, except +for the shooting." + +Full of many thoughts, and tired out with my journey, I went up to bed, in +the same loft with the cobbler and his wife, and fell asleep, and dreamt of +Lillian. + + * * * * * + +About eight o'clock the next morning I started forth with my guide, the +shoemaker, over as desolate a country as men can well conceive. Not a house +was to be seen for miles, except the knot of hovels which we had left, +and here and there a great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard +of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron +above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an +under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind, +which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and +crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only +trees in sight. + +We trudged on, over wide stubbles, with innumerable weeds; over wide +fallows, in which the deserted ploughs stood frozen fast; then over clover +and grass, burnt black with frost; then over a field of turnips, where we +passed a large fold of hurdles, within which some hundred sheep stood, with +their heads turned from the cutting blast. All was dreary, idle, silent; +no sound or sign of human beings. One wondered where the people lived, who +cultivated so vast a tract of civilized, over-peopled, nineteenth-century +England. As we came up to the fold, two little boys hailed us from the +inside--two little wretches with blue noses and white cheeks, scarecrows of +rags and patches, their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice too big +for them, who seemed to have shared between them a ragged pair of worsted +gloves, and cowered among the sheep, under the shelter of a hurdle, crying +and inarticulate with cold. + +"What's the matter, boys?" + +"Turmits is froze, and us can't turn the handle of the cutter. Do ye gie us +a turn, please?" + +We scrambled over the hurdles, and gave the miserable little creatures the +benefit of ten minutes' labour. They seemed too small for such exertion: +their little hands were purple with chilblains, and they were so sorefooted +they could scarcely limp. I was surprised to find them at least three years +older than their size and looks denoted, and still more surprised, too, to +find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the elements--such +as I believe I could not have endured two days running--was the vast sum +of one shilling a week each, Sundays included. "They didn't never go to +school, nor to church nether, except just now and then, sometimes--they had +to mind the shop." + +I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-bred, over-fed, +fat, thick-woolled animals, with their troughs of turnips and malt-dust, +and their racks of rich clover-hay, and their little pent-house of +rock-salt, having nothing to do but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and +the little half-starved shivering animals who were their slaves. Man +the master of the brutes? Bah! As society is now, the brutes are the +masters--the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and the labourer +is their slave. "Oh! but the brutes are eaten!" Well; the horses at least +are not eaten--they live, like landlords, till they die. And those who are +eaten, are certainly not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat, +another kills, to parody Shelley; and, after all, is not the labourer, as +well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society?--devoured body and soul, +not the less really because you are longer about the meal, there being an +old prejudice against cannibalism, and also against murder--except after +the Riot Act has been read. + +"What!" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have we not paid him his +wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?" Yes; and have you not given +your sheep and horses their daily wages, and have they not lived on them? +You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you know, unless they +were alive. But here lies your iniquity: you gave the labourer nothing but +his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their +wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your +competitive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously +(for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?) +to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the +possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital +profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of +daily comforts; but what has he saved?--what is he profited by all those +years of labour? He has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could +have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every +Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole +real profits of his nearly fifty years' labour, and he has nothing. And +then you say that you have not eaten him! You know, in your heart of +hearts, that you have. Else, why in Heaven's name do you pay him poor's +rates? If, as you say, he has been duly repaid in wages, what is the +meaning of that half-a-crown a week?--you owe him nothing. Oh! but the man +would starve--common humanity forbids? What now, Society? Give him alms, if +you will, on the score of humanity; but do not tax people for his support, +whether they choose or not--that were a mere tyranny and robbery. If the +landlord's feelings will not allow him to see the labourer starve, let +him give, in God's name; but let him not cripple and drain, by compulsory +poor-rates, the farmer who has paid him his "just remuneration" of wages, +and the parson who probably, out of his scanty income, gives away twice as +much in alms as the landlord does out of his superfluous one. No, no; as +long as you retain compulsory poor-laws, you confess that it is not merely +humane, but just, to pay the labourer more than his wages. You confess +yourself in debt to him, over and above an uncertain sum, which it suits +you not to define, because such an investigation would expose ugly gaps and +patches in that same snug competitive and property world of yours; and, +therefore, being the stronger party, you compel your debtor to give up the +claim which you confess, for an annuity of half-a-crown a week--that being +the just-above-starving-point of the economic thermometer. And yet you say +you have not eaten the labourer! You see, we workmen too have our thoughts +about political economy, differing slightly from yours, truly--just as the +man who is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the process +from the man who is hanging him. Which view is likely to be the more +practical one? + +With some such thoughts I walked across the open down, toward a circular +camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town. Inside it, some +thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single +large block of stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood, +his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky. As we +pushed through the crowd, I was struck with the wan, haggard look of all +faces; their lacklustre eyes and drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy, +dragging steps, gave them a crushed, dogged air, which was infinitely +painful, and bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than +that of the excitable and passionate artisan. + +There were many women among them, talking shrilly, and looking even more +pinched and wan than the men. + +I remarked, also, that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, pitchforks, +and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons--an ugly sign, which +I ought to have heeded betimes. + +They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with +no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the +stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His +words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like +eloquence or imagination--a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints, +which derived their force only from the intense earnestness, which attested +their truthfulness. As far as I can recollect, I will give the substance of +what I heard. But, indeed, I heard nothing but what has been bandied about +from newspaper to newspaper for years--confessed by all parties, deplored +by all parties, but never an attempt made to remedy it. + +--"The farmers makes slaves on us. I can't hear no difference between a +Christian and a nigger, except they flogs the niggers and starves the +Christians; and I don't know which I'd choose. I served Farmer * * * * +seven year, off and on, and arter harvest he tells me he's no more work +for me, nor my boy nether, acause he's getting too big for him, so he gets +a little 'un instead, and we does nothing; and my boy lies about, getting +into bad ways, like hundreds more; and then we goes to board, and they bids +us go and look for work; and we goes up next part to London. I couldn't +get none; they'd enough to do, they said, to employ their own; and we +begs our way home, and goes into the Union; and they turns us out again +in two or three days, and promises us work again, and gives us two days' +gravel-picking, and then says they has no more for us; and we was sore +pinched, and laid a-bed all day; then next board-day we goes to 'em and +they gives us one day more--and that threw us off another week, and then +next board-day we goes into the Union again for three days, and gets sent +out again: and so I've been starving one-half of the time, and they putting +us off and on o' purpose like that; and I'll bear it no longer, and that's +what I says." + +He came down, and a tall, powerful, well-fed man, evidently in his Sunday +smock-frock and clean yellow leggings, got up and began: + +"I hav'n't no complaint to make about myself. I've a good master, and +the parson's a right kind 'un, and that's more than all can say, and the +squire's a real gentleman; and my master, he don't need to lower his wages. +I gets my ten shillings a week all the year round, and harvesting, and a +pig, and a 'lotment--and that's just why I come here. If I can get it, why +can't you?" + +"Cause our masters baint like yourn." + +"No, by George, there baint no money round here like that, I can tell you." + +"And why ain't they?" continued the speaker. "There's the shame on it. +There's my master can grow five quarters where yourn only grows three; and +so he can live and pay like a man; and so he say he don't care for free +trade. You know, as well as I, that there's not half o' the land round here +grows what it ought. They ain't no money to make it grow more, and besides, +they won't employ no hands to keep it clean. I come across more weeds in +one field here, than I've seen for nine year on our farm. Why arn't some of +you a-getting they weeds up? It 'ud pay 'em to farm better--and they knows +that, but they're too lazy; if they can just get a living off the land, +they don't care; and they'd sooner save money out of your wages, than save +it by growing more corn--it's easier for 'em, it is. There's the work to +be done, and they won't let you do it. There's you crying out for work, +and work crying out for you--and neither of you can get to the other. I +say that's a shame, I do. I say a poor man's a slave. He daren't leave his +parish--nobody won't employ him, as can employ his own folk. And if he +stays in his parish, it's just a chance whether he gets a good master or +a bad 'un. He can't choose, and that's a shame, it is. Why should he go +starving because his master don't care to do the best by the land? If they +can't till the land, I say let them get out of it, and let them work it as +can. And I think as we ought all to sign a petition to government, to tell +'em all about it; though I don't see as how they could help us, unless +they'd make a law to force the squires to put in nobody to a farm as hasn't +money to work it fairly." + +"I says," said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sentences were +continually broken by a hacking cough, "just what he said. If they can't +till the land, let them do it as can. But they won't; they won't let us +have a scrap on it, though we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make +for themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent, if we had an +acre or so o' land; and so it 'ud for they. And so I says as he did--they +want to make slaves on us altogether, just to get the flesh and bones off +us at their own price. Look you at this here down.--If I had an acre on it, +to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this +here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now. +And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and +I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few +potatoes--and he says, 'You be d--d! If you're minding your garden after +hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me in hours--and I +shall want you by-and-by, when the weather breaks'--for it was frost most +bitter, it was. 'And if you gets potatoes you'll be getting a pig--and then +you'll want straw, and meal to fat 'un--and then I'll not trust you in +my barn, I can tell ye;' and so there it was. And if I'd had only one +half-acre of this here very down as we stands on, as isn't worth five +shillings a year--and I'd a given ten shillings for it--my belly wouldn't a +been empty now. Oh, they be dogs in the manger, and the Lord'll reward 'em +therefor! First they says they can't afford to work the land 'emselves, and +then they wain't let us work it ether. Then they says prices is so low they +can't keep us on, and so they lowers our wages; and then when prices goes +up ever so much, our wages don't go up with 'em. So, high prices or low +prices, it's all the same. With the one we can't buy bread, and with the +other we can't get work. I don't mind free trade--not I: to be sure, if +the loaf's cheap, we shall be ruined; but if the loafs dear, we shall be +starved, and for that, we is starved now. Nobody don't care for us; for my +part, I don't much care for myself. A man must die some time or other. Only +I thinks if we could some time or other just see the Queen once, and tell +her all about it, she'd take our part, and not see us put upon like that, I +do." + +"Gentlemen!" cried my guide, the shoemaker, in a somewhat conceited and +dictatorial tone, as he skipped up by the speaker's side, and gently +shouldered him down--"it ain't like the ancient times, as I've read off, +when any poor man as had a petition could come promiscuously to the King's +royal presence, and put it direct into his own hand, and be treated like a +gentleman. Don't you know as how they locks up the Queen now-a-days, and +never lets a poor soul come a-near her, lest she should hear the truth +of all their iniquities? Why they never lets her stir without a lot o' +dragoons with drawn swords riding all around her; and if you dared to go +up to her to ax mercy, whoot! they'd chop your head off before you could +say, 'Please your Majesty.' And then the hypocrites say as it's to keep her +from being frightened--and that's true--for it's frightened she'd be, with +a vengeance, if she knowed all that they grand folks make poor labourers +suffer, to keep themselves in power and great glory. I tell ye, 'tarn't +per-practicable at all, to ax the Queen for anything; she's afeard of +her life on 'em. You just take my advice, and sign a round-robin to the +squires--you tell 'em as you're willing to till the land for 'em, if +they'll let you. There's draining and digging enough to be done as 'ud keep +ye all in work, arn't there?" + +"Ay, ay; there's lots o' work to be done, if so be we could get at it. +Everybody knows that." + +"Well, you tell 'em that. Tell 'em here's hundreds, and hundreds of ye +starving, and willing to work; and then tell 'em, if they won't find ye +work, they shall find ye meat. There's lots o' victuals in their larders +now; haven't you as good a right to it as their jackanapes o' footmen? The +squires is at the bottom of it all. What do you stupid fellows go grumbling +at the farmers for? Don't they squires tax the land twenty or thirty +shillings an acre; and what do they do for that? The best of 'em, if he +gets five thousand a year out o' the land, don't give back five hundred in +charity, or schools, or poor-rates--and what's that to speak of? And the +main of 'em--curse 'em!--they drains the money out o' the land, and takes +it up to London, or into foreign parts, to spend on fine clothes and fine +dinners; or throws it away at elections, to make folks beastly drunk, and +sell their souls for money--and we gets no good on it. I'll tell you what +it's come to, my men--that we can't afford no more landlords. We can't +afford 'em, and that's the truth of it!" + +The crowd growled a dubious assent. + +"Oh, yes, you can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them +first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an +old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt +politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans +of it. Look you here. The farmers, they say they can't live unless they can +make four rents, one for labour, and one for stock, and one for rent, and +one for themselves; ain't that about right? Very well; just now they can't +make four rents--in course they can't. Now, who's to suffer for that?--the +farmer as works, or the labourer as works, or the landlord as does nothing? +But he takes care on himself. He won't give up his rent--not he. Perhaps +he might give back ten per cent, and what's that?--two shillings an acre, +maybe. What's that, if corn falls two pound a load, and more? Then the +farmer gets a stinting; and he can't stint hisself, he's bad enough off +already; he's forty shillings out o' pocket on every load of wheat--that's +eight shillings, maybe, on every acre of his land on a four-course +shift--and where's the eight shillings to come from, for the landlord's +only given him back two on it? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint +his stock, and so he stints the labourers; and so it's you as pays the +landlord's rent--you, my boys, out o' your flesh and bones, you do--and you +can't afford it any longer, by the look of you--so just tell 'em so!" + +This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest. In short, there +seemed to be no hope, no purpose among them--and they felt it; and I could +hear, from the running comment of murmurs, that they were getting every +moment more fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own +helplessness--a mood which the next speech was not likely to soften. + +A pale, thin woman scrambled up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty +and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face +sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a +querulous, 'scornful falsetto: + +"I am an honest woman. I brought up seven children decently; and never axed +the parish for a farden, till my husband died. Then they tells me I can +support myself and mine--and so I does. Early and late I hoed turmits, and +early and late I rep, and left the children at home to mind each other; and +one on 'em fell into the fire, and is gone to heaven, blessed angel! and +two more it pleased the Lord to take in the fever; and the next, I hope, +will soon be out o' this miserable sinful world. But look you here: three +weeks agone, I goes to the board. I had no work. They say they could not +relieve me for the first week, because I had money yet to take.--The +hypocrites! they knowing as I couldn't but owe it all, and a lot more +beside. Next week they sends the officer to inquire. That was ten days +gone, and we starving. Then, on board-day, they gives me two loaves. Then, +next week, they takes it off again. And when I goes over (five miles) to +the board to ax why--they'd find me work--and they never did; so we goes +on starving for another week--for no one wouldn't trust us; how could they +when we was in debt already a whole lot?--you're all in debt!" + +"That we are." + +"There's some here as never made ten shillings a week in their lives, as +owes twenty pounds at the shop!" + +"Ay, and more--and how's a man ever to pay that?" + +"So this week, when I comes, they offers me the house. Would I go into +the house? They'd be glad to have me, acause I'm strong and hearty and a +good nurse. But would I, that am an honest woman, go to live with they +offscourings--they"--(she used a strong word)--"would I be parted from my +children? Would I let them hear the talk, and keep the company as they will +there, and learn all sorts o' sins that they never heard on, blessed be +God! I'll starve first, and see them starve too--though, Lord knows, it's +hard.--Oh! it's hard," she said, bursting into tears, "to leave them as I +did this morning, crying after their breakfasts, and I none to give 'em. +I've got no bread--where should I? I've got no fire--how can I give one +shilling and sixpence a hundred for coals? And if I did, who'd fetch 'em +home? And if I dared break a hedge for a knitch o' wood, they'd put me in +prison, they would, with the worst. What be I to do? What be you going to +do? That's what I came here for. What be ye going to do for us women--us +that starve and stint, and wear our hands off for you men and your +children, and get hard words, and hard blows from you? Oh! if I was a man, +I know what I'd do, I do! But I don't think you be men three parts o' you, +or you'd not see the widow and the orphan starve as you do, and sit quiet +and grumble, as long as you can keep your own bodies and souls together. +Eh! ye cowards!" + +What more she would have said in her excitement, which had risen to an +absolute scream, I cannot tell; but some prudent friend pulled her down off +the stone, to be succeeded by a speaker more painful, if possible; an aged +blind man, the worn-out melancholy of whose slow, feeble voice made my +heart sink, and hushed the murmuring crowd into silent awe. + +Slowly he turned his grey, sightless head from side to side, as if feeling +for the faces below him--and then began: + +"I heard you was all to be here--and I suppose you are; and I said I would +come--though I suppose they'll take off my pay, if they hear of it. But I +knows the reason of it, and the bad times and all. The Lord revealed it to +me as clear as day, four years agone come Easter-tide. It's all along of +our sins, and our wickedness--because we forgot Him--it is. I mind the old +war times, what times they was, when there was smuggled brandy up and down +in every public, and work more than hands could do. And then, how we all +forgot the Lord, and went after our own lusts and pleasures--squires and +parsons, and farmers and labouring folk, all alike. They oughted to +ha' knowed better--and we oughted too. Many's the Sunday I spent in +skittle-playing and cock-fighting, and the pound I spent in beer, as might +ha' been keeping me now. We was an evil and perverse generation--and so one +o' my sons went for a sodger, and was shot at Waterloo, and the other fell +into evil ways, and got sent across seas--and I be left alone for my +sins. But the Lord was very gracious to me and showed me how it was all a +judgment on my sins, he did. He has turned his face from us, and that's why +we're troubled. And so I don't see no use in this meeting. It won't do no +good; nothing won't do us no good, unless we all repent of our wicked ways, +our drinking, and our dirt, and our love-children, and our picking and +stealing, and gets the Lord to turn our hearts, and to come back again, and +have mercy on us, and take us away speedily out of this wretched world, +where there's nothing but misery and sorrow, into His everlasting glory, +Amen! Folks say as the day of judgment's a coming soon--and I partly think +so myself. I wish it was all over, and we in heaven above; and that's all I +have to say." + +It seemed a not unnatural revulsion, when a tall, fierce man, with a +forbidding squint, sprung jauntily on the stone, and setting his arms +a-kimbo, broke out: + +"Here be I, Blinkey, and I has as good a right to speak as ere a one. +You're all blamed fools, you are. So's that old blind buffer there. You +sticks like pigs in a gate, hollering and squeeking, and never helping +yourselves. Why can't you do like me? I never does no work--darned if I'll +work to please the farmers. The rich folks robs me, and I robs them, +and that's fair and equal. You only turn poachers--you only go stealing +turmits, and fire-ud, and all as you can find--and then you'll not need to +work. Arn't it yourn? The game's no one's, is it now?--you know that. And +if you takes turmits or corn, they're yourn--you helped to grow 'em. And +if you're put to prison, I tell ye, it's a darned deal warmer, and better +victuals too, than ever a one of you gets at home, let alone the Union. +Now I knows the dodge. Whenever my wife's ready for her trouble, I gets +cotched; then I lives like a prince in gaol, and she goes to the workus; +and when it's all over, start fair again. Oh, you blockheads'--to stand +here shivering with empty bellies.--You just go down to the farm and burn +they stacks over the old rascal's head; and then they that let you starve +now, will be forced to keep you then. If you can't get your share of the +poor-rates, try the county-rates, my bucks--you can get fat on them at the +Queen's expense--and that's more than you'll do in ever a Union as I hear +on. Who'll come down and pull the farm about the folks' ears? Warn't he as +turned five on yer off last week? and ain't he more corn there than 'ud +feed you all round this day, and won't sell it, just because he's +waiting till folks are starved enough, and prices rise? Curse the old +villain!--who'll help to disappoint him 'o that? Come along!" + +A confused murmur arose, and a movement in the crowd. I felt that now or +never was the time to speak. If once the spirit of mad aimless riot broke +loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of +being implicated in deeds which I abhorred; and I sprung on the stone and +entreated a few minutes' attention, telling them that I was a deputation +from one of the London Chartist committees. This seemed to turn the stream +of their thoughts, and they gaped in stupid wonder at me as I began hardly +less excited than themselves. + +I assured them of the sympathy of the London working men, made a comment +on their own speeches--which the reader ought to be able to make for +himself--and told them that I had come to entreat their assistance towards +obtaining such a parliamentary representation as would secure them their +rights. I explained the idea of the Charter, and begged for their help in +carrying it out. + +To all which they answered surlily, that they did not know anything about +politics--that what they wanted was bread. + +I went on, more vehement than ever, to show them how all their misery +sprung (as I then fancied) from being unrepresented--how the laws were made +by the rich for the poor, and not by all for all--how the taxes bit deep +into the necessaries of the labourer, and only nibbled at the luxuries of +the rich--how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which +the poor were prone, while it dared not interfere with the subtler +iniquities of the high-born and wealthy--how poor-rates, as I have just +said, were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not +fully remunerated. I tried to make them see that their interest, as much as +common justice, demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of +the nation, such as would truly proclaim their wants, their rights, their +wrongs; and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words. + +To all which they answered, that their stomachs were empty, and they wanted +bread. "And bread we will have!" + +"Go, then," I cried, losing my self-possession between disappointment and +the maddening desire of influence--and, indeed, who could hear their story, +or even look upon their faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him. +unless self-interest had drugged his heart and conscience--"go," I cried, +"and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. No man is bound to +starve. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one. Laws +were made for man, not man for laws. If you had made the laws yourselves, +they might bind you even in this extremity; but they were made in spite of +you--against you. They rob you, crash you; even now they deny you bread. +God has made the earth free to all, like the air and sunshine, and you are +shut out from off it. The earth is yours, for you till it. Without you it +would be a desert. Go and demand your share of that corn, the fruit of your +own industry. What matter, if your tyrants imprison, murder you?--they can +but kill your bodies at once, instead of killing them piecemeal, as they do +now; and your blood will cry against them from the ground:--Ay, Woe!"--I +went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, +however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in +them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene +self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it--"Woe unto those that grind the +faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to +field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the +poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back by fraud, +cry out against them; and their cry has entered into the ears of the God of +heaven--" + +But I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread! +Bread!" My hearers had taken me at my word. I had raised the spirit; could +I command him, now he was abroad? + +"Go to Jennings's farm!" + +"No! he ain't no corn, he sold un' all last week." + +"There's plenty at the Hall farm! Rouse out the old steward!" + +And, amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill, +sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats. +I tried again and again to stop and harangue them. I shouted myself hoarse +about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence; +entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed; +but my voice was drowned in the uproar. Still I felt myself in a measure +responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not, +in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the +worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the +point of a pitchfork. + +Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palings, we entered a wide, +rushy, neglected park, and along an old gravel road, now green with grass, +we opened on a sheet of frozen water, and, on the opposite bank, the huge +square corpse of a hall, the close-shuttered windows of which gave it a +dead and ghastly look, except where here and there a single one showed, as +through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfurnished rooms within. On the +right, beneath us, lay, amid tall elms, a large mass of farm-buildings, +into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously--just in time to +see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park, amid +the yells of the mob. + +"The old rascal's gone! and he'll call up the yeomanry. We must be quick, +boys!" shouted one, and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an +indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys; while a +few of the more steady went up to the house-door, and knocking, demanded +sternly the granary keys. + +A fat virago planted herself in the doorway, and commenced railing at them, +with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their sex gives +to coarse women; but she was hastily shoved aside, and took shelter in an +upper room, where she stood screaming and cursing at the window. + +The invaders returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping +asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the +contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It +was a sad sight. Here was a poor shivering woman, hiding scraps of food +under her cloak, and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had +left at home. There was a tall man, leaning against the palings, gnawing +ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy, who had scrambled up behind +him. Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me, with a can of ale. +"Drink, my beauty! you're dry with hollering by now!" + +"The ale is neither yours nor mine; I won't touch it." + +"Darn your buttons! You said the wheat was ourn, acause we growed it--and +thereby so's the beer--for we growed the barley too." + +And so thought the rest; for the yard was getting full of drunkards, a +woman or two among them, reeling knee-deep in the loose straw among the +pigs. + +"Thresh out they ricks!" roared another. + +"Get out the threshing-machine!" + +"You harness the horses!" + +"No! there bain't no time. Yeomanry'll be here. You mun leave the ricks." + +"Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get naught by they." + +"Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's farm!" + +"As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed +through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my +face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in +time to here a crackle--there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was +in a blaze of fire. + +I stood awe-struck--I cannot tell how long--watching how the live +flame-snakes crept and hissed, and leapt and roared, and rushed in long +horizontal jets from stack to stack before the howling wind, and fastened +their fiery talons on the barn-eaves, and swept over the peaked roofs, and +hurled themselves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond--the food of man, +the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin!--Was it my doing? Was it +not? + +At last I recollected myself, and ran round again into the straw-yard, +where the fire was now falling fast. The only thing which saved the house +was the weltering mass of bullocks, pigs, and human beings drunk and sober, +which, trampled out unwittingly the flames as fast as they caught. + +The fire had seized the roofs of the cart-stables, when a great lubberly +boy blubbered out:-- + +"Git my horses out! git my horses out o' the fire! I be so fond o' mun!" + +"Well, they ain't done no harm, poor beasts!" And a dozen men ran in to +save them; but the poor wretches, screaming with terror, refused to stir. I +never knew what became of them-but their shrieks still haunt my dreams.... + +The yard now became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob--and +alas! there were but too many of them--hurled the furniture out of the +windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I +expostulated, threatened; I was answered by laughter, curses, frantic +dances, and brandished plunder. Then I first found out how large a portion +of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd; and at the +moment, I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers, in +indignation at the rascals. But even the really starving majority, whose +faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery, seemed gone mad for the +moment. The old crust of sullen, dogged patience had broken up, and their +whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge--and yet +there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman, who, surrounded +with her blubbering children, stood screaming and cursing at the +first-floor window, getting redder and fatter at every scream. The worst +personality she heard was a roar of laughter, in which, such is poor +humanity, I could not but join, as her little starved drab of a +maid-of-all-work ran out of the door, with a bundle of stolen finery under +her arm, and high above the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the +rioters, rose her mistress's yell. + +"O Betsy! Betsy! you little awdacious unremorseful hussy!--a running away +with my best bonnet and shawl!" + +The laughter soon, however, subsided, when a man rushed breathless into the +yard, shouting, "The yeomanry!" + +At that sound; to my astonishment, a general panic ensued. The miserable +wretches never stopped to enquire how many, or how far off, they were--but +scrambled to every outlet of the yard, trampling each other down in their +hurry. I leaped up on the wall, and saw, galloping down the park, a mighty +armament of some fifteen men, with a tall officer at their head, mounted on +a splendid horse. + +"There they be! there they be! all the varmers, and young Squire Clayton +wi' mun, on his grey hunter! O Lord! O Lord! and all their swords drawn!" + +I thought of the old story in Herodotus--how the Scythian masters returned +from war to the rebel slaves who had taken possession of their lands and +wives, and brought them down on their knees with terror, at the mere sight +of the old dreaded dog-whips. + +I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed with +myself--the people. I longed, for the moment, to die and leave it all; and +left almost alone, sat down on a stone, buried my head between my hands, +and tried vainly to shut out from my ears the roaring of the fire. + +At that moment "Blinkey" staggered out past me and against me, a +writing-desk in his hands, shouting, in his drunken glory, "I've vound ut +at last! I've got the old fellow's money! Hush! What a vule I be, hollering +like that!"--And he was going to sneak off, with a face of drunken cunning, +when I sprung up and seized him by the throat. + +"Rascal! robber! lay that down! Have you not done mischief enough already?" + +"I wain't have no sharing. What? Do you want un yourself, eh? Then we'll +see who's the stronger!" + +And in an instant he shook me from him, and dealt me a blow with the corner +of the desk, that laid me on the ground.... + +I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and the gleam and jingle +of their arms, as they galloped into the yard. I caught a glimpse of the +tall young officer, as his great grey horse swept through the air, over +the high yard-pales--a feat to me utterly astonishing. Half a dozen long +strides--the wretched ruffian, staggering across the field with his booty, +was caught up.--The clear blade gleamed in the air--and then a fearful +yell--and after that I recollect nothing. + + * * * * * + +Slowly I recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a truckle-bed--stone +walls and a grated window! A man stood over me with a large bunch of +keys in his hand. He had been wrapping my head with wet towels. I knew, +instinctively, where I was. + +"Well, young man," said he, in a not unkindly tone--"and a nice job you've +made of it! Do you know where you are?". + +"Yes," answered I, quietly; "in D * * * * gaol." + +"Exactly so!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +THE TRIAL. + + +The day was come--quickly, thank Heaven; and I stood at the bar, with four +or five miserable, haggard labourers, to take my trial for sedition, riot, +and arson. + +I had passed the intervening weeks half stupified with the despair of +utter disappointment; disappointment at myself and my own loss of +self-possession, which had caused all my misfortune,--perhaps, too, and the +thought was dreadful, that of my wretched fellow-sufferers:--disappointment +with the labourers, with The Cause; and when the thought came over me, in +addition, that I was irreparably disgraced in the eyes of my late patrons, +parted for ever from Lillian by my own folly, I laid down my head and +longed to die. + +Then, again, I would recover awhile, and pluck up heart. I would plead my +cause myself--I would testify against the tyrants to their face--I would +say no longer to their besotted slaves, but to the men themselves, "Go to, +ye rich men, weep and howl! The hire of your labourers who have reaped down +your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of +them that have reaped hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Hosts." +I would brave my fate--I would die protesting, and glory in my martyrdom. +But-- + +"Martyrdom?" said Mackaye, who had come down to D * * * *, and was busy +night and day about my trial. "Ye'll just leave alone the martyr dodge, my +puir bairn. Ye're na martyr at a', ye'll understand, but a vera foolish +callant, that lost his temper, an' cast his pearls before swine--an' very +questionable pearls they, too, to judge by the price they fetch i' the +market." + +And then my heart sank again. And a few days before the trial a letter +came, evidently in my cousin's handwriting, though only signed with his +initials: + +"SIR,--You are in a very great scrape--you will not deny that. How you +will get out of it depends on your own common sense. You probably won't be +hanged--for nobody believes that you had a hand in burning the farm; but, +unless you take care, you will be transported. Call yourself John Nokes; +entrust your case to a clever lawyer, and keep in the background. I warn +you, as a friend--if you try to speechify, and play the martyr, and let out +who you are, the respectable people who have been patronizing you will find +it necessary for their own sakes to clap a stopper on you for good and all, +to make you out an impostor and a swindler, and get you out of the way for +life: while, if you are quiet, it will suit them to be quiet too, and say +nothing about you, if you say nothing about them; and then there will be a +chance that they, as well as your own family, will do everything in their +power to hush the matter up. So, again, don't let out your real name; and +instruct your lawyers to know nothing about the W.'s; and then, perhaps, +the Queen's counsel will know nothing about them either. Mind--you are +warned, and woe to you if you are fool enough not to take the warning. + +"G.L." + +Plead in a false name! Never, so help me Heaven! To go into court with a +lie in my mouth--to make myself an impostor--probably a detected one--it +seemed the most cunning scheme for ruining me, which my evil genius could +have suggested, whether or not it might serve his own selfish ends. But as +for the other hints, they seemed not unreasonable, and promised to save me +trouble; while the continued pressure of anxiety and responsibility was +getting intolerable to my over-wearied brain. So I showed the letter to +Mackaye, who then told me that he had taken it for granted that I should +come to my right mind, and had therefore already engaged an old compatriot +as attorney, and the best counsel which money could procure. + +"But where did you get the money? You have not surely been spending your +own savings on me?" + +"I canna say that I wadna ha' so dune, in case o' need. But the men in town +just subscribit; puir honest fellows." + +"What! is my folly to be the cause of robbing them of their slender +earnings? Never, Mackaye! Besides, they cannot have subscribed enough to +pay the barrister whom you just mentioned. Tell me the whole truth, or, +positively, I will plead my cause myself." + +"Aweel, then, there was a bit bank-note or twa cam' to hand--I canna say +whaur fra'. But they that sent it direckit it to be expendit in the defence +o' the sax prisoners--whereof ye make ane." + +Again a world of fruitless conjecture. It must be the same unknown friend +who had paid my debt to my cousin--Lillian? + + * * * * * + +And so the day was come. I am not going to make a long picturesque +description of my trial--trials have become lately quite hackneyed +subjects, stock properties for the fiction-mongers--neither, indeed, +could I do so, if I would. I recollect nothing of that day, but +fragments--flashes of waking existence, scattered up and down in what +seemed to me a whole life of heavy, confused, painful dreams, with the +glare of all those faces concentrated on me--those countless eyes which +I could not, could not meet--stony, careless, unsympathizing--not even +angry--only curious. If they had but frowned on me, insulted me, gnashed +their teeth on me, I could have glared back defiance; as it was, I stood +cowed and stupified, a craven by the side of cravens. + +Let me see--what can I recollect? Those faces--faces--everywhere faces--a +faint, sickly smell of flowers--a perpetual whispering and rustling of +dresses--and all through it, the voice of some one talking, talking--I +seldom knew what, or whether it was counsel, witness, judge, or prisoner, +that was speaking. I was like one asleep at a foolish lecture, who hears in +dreams, and only wakes when the prosing stops. Was it not prosing? What +was it to me what they said? They could not understand me--my motives--my +excuses; the whole pleading, on my side as well as the crown's, seemed one +huge fallacy--beside the matter altogether--never touching the real point +at issue, the eternal moral equity of my deeds or misdeeds. I had no doubt +that it would all be conducted quite properly, and fairly, and according to +the forms of law; but what was law to me--I wanted justice. And so I let +them go on their own way, conscious of but one thought--was Lillian in the +court? + +I dared not look and see. I dared not lift up my eyes toward the gaudy +rows of ladies who had crowded to the "interesting trial of the D * * * * +rioters." The torture of anxiety was less than that of certainty might be, +and I kept my eyes down, and wondered how on earth the attorneys had found +in so simple a case enough to stuff those great blue bags. + +When, however, anything did seem likely to touch on a reality, I woke up +forthwith, in spite of myself. I recollect well, for instance, a squabble +about challenging the jurymen; and my counsel's voice of pious indignation, +as he asked, "Do you call these agricultural gentlemen, and farmers, +however excellent and respectable--on which point Heaven forbid that I, +&c., &c.--the prisoner's 'pares,' peers, equals, or likes? What single +interest, opinion, or motive, have they in common, but the universal one +of self-interest, which, in this case, happens to pull in exactly opposite +directions? Your Lordship has often animadverted fully and boldly on the +practice of allowing a bench of squires to sit in judgment on a poacher; +surely it is quite as unjust that agricultural rioters should be tried by a +jury of the very class against whom they are accused of rebelling." + +"Perhaps my learned brother would like a jury of rioters?" suggested some +Queen's counsel. + +"Upon my word, then, it would be much the fairer plan." + +I wondered whether he would have dared to say as much in the street +outside--and relapsed into indifference. I believe there was some long +delay, and wrangling about law-quibbles, which seemed likely at one time to +quash the whole prosecution, but I was rather glad than sorry to find +that it had been overruled. It was all a play, a game of bowls--the +bowls happening to be human heads--got up between the lawyers, for the +edification of society; and it would have been a pity not to play it out, +according to the rules and regulations thereof. + +As for the evidence, its tenor may be easily supposed from my story. +There were those who could swear to my language at the camp. I was seen +accompanying the mob to the farm, and haranguing them. The noise was too +great for the witnesses to hear all I said, but they were certain I talked +about the sacred name of liberty. The farmer's wife had seen me run round +to the stacks when they were fired--whether just before or just after, she +never mentioned. She had seen me running up and down in front of the house, +talking loudly, and gesticulating violently; she saw me, too, struggling +with another rioter for her husband's desk;--and the rest of the witnesses, +some of whom I am certain I had seen, busy plundering, though they were +ready to swear that they had been merely accidental passers-by, seemed +to think that they proved their own innocence, and testified their pious +indignation, by avoiding carefully any fact which could excuse me. But, +somehow, my counsel thought differently; and cross-examined, and bullied, +and tormented, and misstated--as he was bound to do; and so one witness +after another, clumsy and cowardly enough already, was driven by his +engines of torture, as if by a pitiless spell, to deny half that he had +deposed truly, and confess a great deal that was utterly false--till +confusion became worse confounded, and there seemed no truth anywhere, +and no falsehood either, and "naught was everything, and everything was +naught;" till I began to have doubts whether the riot had ever occurred +at all--and, indeed, doubts of my own identity also, when I had heard the +counsel for the crown impute to me personally, as in duty bound, every +seditious atrocity which, had been committed either in England or France +since 1793. To him, certainly, I did listen tolerably; it was "as good as a +play." Atheism, blasphemy, vitriol-throwing, and community of women, were +among my lighter offences--for had I not actually been engaged in a plot +for the destruction of property? How did the court know that I had not +spent the night before the riot, as "the doctor" and his friends did before +the riots of 1839, in drawing lots for the estates of the surrounding +gentlemen, with my deluded dupes and victims?--for of course I, and not +want of work, had deluded them into rioting; at least, they never would +have known that they were starving, if I had not stirred up their evil +passions by daring to inform them of that otherwise impalpable fact. I, the +only Chartist there? Might there not have been dozens of them?--emissaries +from London, dressed up as starving labourers, and rheumatic old women? +There were actually traces of a plan for seizing all the ladies in the +country, and setting up a seraglio of them in D * * * * Cathedral. How did +the court know that there was not one? + +Ay, how indeed? and how did I know either? I really began to question +whether the man might not be right after all. The whole theory seemed +so horribly coherent--possible, natural. I might have done it, under +possession of the devil, and forgotten it in excitement--I might--perhaps +I did. And if there, why not elsewhere? Perhaps I had helped Jourdan +Coupe-tête at Lyons, and been king of the Munster Anabaptists--why not? +What matter? When would this eternity of wigs, and bonnets, and glaring +windows, and ear-grinding prate and jargon, as of a diabolic universe of +street organs, end--end--end--and I get quietly hanged, and done with it +all for ever? + +Oh, the horrible length of that day! It seemed to me as if I had been +always on my trial, ever since I was born. I wondered at times how +many years ago it had all begun. I felt what a far stronger and more +single-hearted patriot than I, poor Somerville, says of himself under the +torture of the sergeant's cat, in a passage, whose horrible simplicity and +unconscious pathos have haunted me ever since I read it; how, when only +fifty out of his hundred lashes had fallen on the bleeding back, "_The time +since they began was like a long period of life: I felt as if I had lived +all the time of my real life in torture, and, that the days when existence +had a pleasure, in it were a dream long, long gone by._" + +The reader may begin to suspect that I was fast going mad; and I believe I +was. If he has followed my story with a human heart, he may excuse me of +any extreme weakness, if I did at moments totter on the verge of that +abyss. + +What saved me, I believe now, was the keen, bright look of love and +confidence which flashed on me from Crossthwaite's glittering eyes, when he +was called forward as a witness to my character. He spoke out like a man, +I hear, that day. But the counsel for the crown tried to silence him +triumphantly, by calling on him to confess himself a Chartist; as if a man +must needs be a liar and a villain because he holds certain opinions about +the franchise! However that was, I heard, the general opinion of the court. +And then Crossthwaite lost his temper and called the Queen's counsel a +hired bully, and so went down; having done, as I was told afterwards, no +good to me. + +And then there followed a passage of tongue fence between Mackaye and some +barrister, and great laughter at the barrister's expense; and then. I heard +the old man's voice rise thin and clear: + +"Let him that is without sin amang ye, cast the first stane!" + +And as he went down he looked at me--a look full of despair. I never had +had a ray of hope from the beginning; but now I began to think whether men +suffered much when they were hung, and whether one woke at once into the +next life, or had to wait till the body had returned to the dust, and watch +the ugly process of one's own decay. I was not afraid of death--I never +experienced that sensation. I am not physically brave. I am as thoroughly +afraid of pain as any child can be; but that next world has never offered +any prospect to me, save boundless food for my insatiable curiosity. + + * * * * * + +But at that moment my attorney thrust into my hand a little dirty scrap of +paper. "Do you know this man?" I read it. + +"SIR,--I wull tell all truthe. Mr. Locke is a murdered man if he be hanged. +Lev me spek out, for love of the Lord. + +"J. DAVIS." + +No. I never had heard of him; and I let the paper fall. + +A murdered man? I had known that all along. Had not the Queen's counsel +been trying all day to murder me, as was their duty, seeing that they got +their living thereby? + +A few moments after, a labouring man was in the witness-box; and to my +astonishment, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the +truth. + +I will not trouble the reader with his details, for they were simply +and exactly what I have already stated. He was badgered, bullied, +cross-examined, but nothing could shake him. With that dogged honesty, and +laconic dignity, which is the good side of the English peasant's character, +he stood manfully to his assertion--that I had done everything that words +or actions could do to prevent violence, even to the danger of my own +personal safety. He swore to the words which I used when trying to wrest +the desk from the man who had stolen it; and when the Queen's counsel asked +him, tauntingly, who had set him on bringing his new story there at the +eleventh hour, he answered, equally to the astonishment of his questioner, +and of me, + +"Muster Locke, hisself." + +"What! the prisoner?" almost screamed the counsellor, who fancied, I +suppose, that he had stumbled on a confession of unblushing bribery. + +"Yes, he; he there. As he went up over hill to meeting he met my two boys +a shep-minding; and, because the cutter was froze, he stop and turn the +handle for 'em for a matter of ten minutes; and I was coming up over field, +and says I, I'll hear what that chap's got to say--there can't be no harm +in going up arter the likes of he; for, says I to myself, a man can't have +got any great wickedness a plotting in he's head, when he'll stop a ten +minutes to help two boys as he never sot eyes on afore in his life; and I +think their honours'll say the same." + +Whether my reader will agree or not with the worthy fellow, my counsel, I +need not say, did, and made full use of his hint. All the previous evidence +was now discovered to have corroborated the last witness, except where +it had been notoriously overthrown. I was extolled as a miracle of calm +benevolence; and black became grey, and grey became spotless white, and the +whole feeling of the court seemed changed in my favour; till the little +attorney popped up his head and whispered to me: + +"By George! that last witness has saved your life." + +To which I answered, "Very well"--and turned stupidly back upon that +nightmare thought--was Lillian in the court? + + * * * * * + +At last, a voice, the judge's I believe, for it was grave, gentle, almost +compassionate, asked us one by one whether we had anything to say in our +own defence. I recollect an indistinct murmur from one after another of the +poor semi-brutes on my left; and then my attorney looking up to me, made +me aware that I was expected to speak. On the moment, somehow, my whole +courage returned to me. I felt that I must unburden my heart, now or never. +With a sudden effort I roused myself, and looking fixedly and proudly at +the reverend face opposite, began: + +"The utmost offence which has been proved against me is a few bold words, +producing consequences as unexpected as illogical. If the stupid ferocity +with which my words were misunderstood, as by a horde of savages rather +than Englishmen;--if the moral and physical condition of these prisoners at +my side;--of those witnesses who have borne testimony against me, miserable +white slaves, miscalled free labourers;--ay, if a single walk through the +farms and cottages on which this mischief was bred, affords no excuse for +one indignant sentence--" + +There she was! There she had been all the time--right opposite to me, close +to the judge--cold, bright, curious--smiling! And as our eyes met, she +turned away, and whispered gaily something to a young man who sat beside +her. + +Every drop of blood in my body rushed into my forehead; the court, the +windows, and the faces, whirled round and round, and I fell senseless on +the floor of the dock. + + * * * * * + +I next recollect some room or other in the gaol, Mackaye with both my hands +in his; and the rough kindly voice of the gaoler congratulating me on +having "only got three years." + +"But you didn't show half a good pluck," said some one. "There's two on 'em +transported, took it as bold as brass, and thanked the judge for getting +'em out 'o this starving place 'free gracious for nothing," says they." + +"Ah!" quoth the little attorney, rubbing his hands, "you should have seen +* * * * and * * * * after the row in '42! They were the boys for the Bull +Ring! Gave a barrister as good as he brought, eh, Mr. Mackaye? My small +services, you remember, were of no use, really no use at all--quite ashamed +to send in my little account. Managed the case themselves, like two +patriotic parties as they were, with a degree of forensic acuteness, +inspired by the consciousness of a noble cause--Ahem! You remember, friend +M.? Grand triumphs those, eh?" + +"Ay," said Sandy, "I mind them unco weel--they cost me a' my few savings, +mair by token; an' mony a braw fallow paid for ither folks' sins that tide. +But my puir laddie here's no made o' that stuff. He's ower thin-skinned for +a patriot." + +"Ah, well--this little taste of British justice will thicken his hide for +him, eh?" And the attorney chuckled and winked. "He'll come out again as +tough as a bull dog, and as surly too. Eh, Mr. Mackaye?--eh?" + +"'Deed, then, I'm unco sair afeard that your opeenion is no a'thegither +that improbable," answered Sandy with a drawl of unusual solemnity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +PRISON THOUGHTS. + + +I was alone in my cell. + +Three years' imprisonment! Thirty-six months!--one thousand and ninety-five +days--and twenty-four whole hours in each of them! Well--I should sleep +half the time: one-third at least. Perhaps I should not be able to sleep! +To lie awake, and think--there! the thought was horrible--it was all +horrible. To have three whole years cut out of my life, instead of having +before me, as I had always as yet had, a mysterious Eldorado of new schemes +and hopes, possible developments, possible triumphs, possible bliss--to +have nothing, nothing before me but blank and stagnation, dead loss and +waste: and then to go out again, and start once more where I had left off +yesterday! + +It should not be! I would not lose these years! I would show myself a man; +they should feel my strength just when they fancied they had crushed me +utterly! They might bury me, but I should rise again!--I should rise again +more glorious, perhaps to be henceforth immortal, and live upon the lips +of men. I would educate myself; I would read--what would I not read? These +three years should be a time of sacred retirement and contemplation, as of +Thebaid Anchorite, or Mahomet in his Arabian cave. I would write pamphlets +that should thunder through the land, and make tyrants tremble on their +thrones! All England--at least all crushed and suffering hearts--should +break forth at my fiery words into one roar of indignant sympathy. No--I +would write a poem; I would concentrate all my experience, my aspirations, +all the hopes, and wrongs, and sorrows of the poor, into one garland of +thorns--one immortal epic of suffering. What should I call it? And I set to +work deliberately--such a thing is man--to think of a title. + +I looked up, and my eye caught the close bars of the little window; +and then came over me, for the first time, the full meaning of that +word--Prison; that word which the rich use so lightly, knowing well that +there is no chance, in these days, of there ever finding themselves in one; +for the higher classes never break the laws--seeing that they have made +them to fit themselves. Ay, I was in prison. I could not go out or come in +at will. I was watched, commanded at every turn. I was a brute animal, a +puppet, a doll, that children put away in a cupboard, and there it lies. +And yet my whole soul was as wide, fierce, roving, struggling as ever. +Horrible contradiction! The dreadful sense of helplessness, the crushing +weight of necessity, seemed to choke me. The smooth white walls, the +smooth white ceiling, seemed squeezing in closer and closer on me, and yet +dilating into vast inane infinities, just as the merest knot of mould +will transform itself, as one watches it, and nothing else, into enormous +cliffs, long slopes of moor, and spurs of mountain-range. Oh, those smooth +white walls and ceilings! If there had but been a print--a stain of dirt--a +cobweb, to fleck their unbroken ghastliness! They stared at me, like grim, +impassive, featureless formless fiends; all the more dreadful for their +sleek, hypocritic cleanliness--purity as of a saint-inquisitor watching +with spotless conscience the victim on the rack. They choked me--I gasped +for breath, stretched out my arms, rolled shrieking on the floor--the +narrow chequered glimpse of free blue sky, seen through the window, seemed +to fade dimmer and dimmer, farther and farther off. I sprang up, as if to +follow it--rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin, +puny arms--and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral +towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery bars of +sunset, like great angels at the gates of Paradise, watching in stately +sorrow all the wailing and the wrong below. And beneath, beneath--the +well-known roofs--Lillian's home, and all its proud and happy memories! It +was but a corner of a gable, a scrap of garden, that I could see beyond +intervening roofs and trees--but could I mistake them? There was the very +cedar-tree; I knew its dark pyramid but too well! There I had walked by +her; there, just behind that envious group of chestnuts, she was now. The +light was fading; it must be six o'clock; she must be in her room now, +dressing herself for dinner, looking so beautiful! And as I gazed, and +gazed, all the intervening objects became transparent and vanished before +the intensity of my imagination. Were my poems in her room still? Perhaps +she had thrown them away--the condemned rioter's poems! Was she thinking of +me? Yes--with horror and contempt. Well, at least she was thinking of me. +And she would understand me at last--she must. Some day she would know +all I had borne for love of her--the depth, the might, the purity of my +adoration. She would see the world honouring me, in the day of my triumph, +when I was appreciated at last; when I stood before the eyes of admiring +men, a people's singer, a king of human spirits, great with the rank which +genius gives, then she would find out what a man had loved her: then she +would know the honour, the privilege of a poet's worship. + +--But that trial scene. + +Ay--that trial scene. That cold unmoved smile!--when she knew me, must have +known me, not to be the wretch which those hired slanderers had called me. +If she had cared for me--if she had a woman's heart in her at all, any +pity, any justice, would she not have spoken? Would she not have called on +others to speak, and clear me of the calumny? Nonsense! Impossible! She--so +frail, tender, retiring--how could she speak? How did I know that she had +not felt for me? It was woman's nature--duty, to conceal her feelings; +perhaps that after all was the true explanation of that smile. Perhaps, +too, she might have spoken--might be even now pleading for me in secret; +not that I wished to be pardoned--not I--but it would be so delicious to +have her, her, pleading for me! Perhaps--perhaps I might hear of her--from +her! Surely she could not leave me here so close, without some token! And I +actually listened, I know not how long, expecting the door to open, and a +message to arrive; till, with my eyes riveted on that bit of gable, and my +ears listening behind me like a hare's in her form, to catch every sound in +the ward outside, I fell fast asleep, and forgot all in the heavy dreamless +torpor of utter mental and bodily exhaustion. + +I was awakened by the opening of my cell door and the appearance of the +turnkey. + +"Well, young man, all right again? You've had a long nap; and no wonder, +you've had a hard time of it lately; and a good lesson, to you, too." + +"How long have I slept? I do not recollect going to bed. And how came I to +lie down without undressing?" + +"I found you, at lock-up hours, asleep there kneeling on the chair, with +your head on the window-sill; and a mercy you hadn't tumbled off and broke +your back. Now, look here.--You seems a civil sort of chap; and civil gets +as civil gives with me. Only don't you talk no politics. They ain't no good +to nobody, except the big 'uns, wot gets their living thereby; and I should +think you'd had dose enough on 'em to last for a month of Sundays. So just +get yourself tidy, there's a lad, and come along with me to chapel." + +I obeyed him, in that and other things; and I never received from him, or, +indeed, from any one else there, aught but kindness. I have no complaint to +make--but prison is prison. As for talking politics, I never, during those +three years, exchanged as many sentences with any of my fellow-prisoners. +What had I to say to them? Poachers and petty thieves--the scum of misery, +ignorance, and rascality throughout the country. If my heart yearned toward +them at times, it was generally shut close by the exclusive pride of +superior intellect and knowledge. I considered it, as it was, a degradation +to be classed with such; never asking myself how far I had brought that +degradation on myself; and I loved to show my sense of injustice by +walking, moody and silent, up and down a lonely corner of the yard; and at +last contrived, under the plea of ill health (and, truly, I never was ten +minutes without coughing), to confine myself entirely to my cell, and +escape altogether the company of a class whom I despised, almost hated, as +my betrayers, before whom I had cast away my pearls--questionable though +they were according to Mackaye. Oh! there is in the intellectual +workman's heart, as in all others, the root of Pharisaism--the lust after +self-glorifying superiority, on the ground of "genius." We too are men; +frail, selfish, proud as others. The days are past, thank God, when the +"gentlemen button-makers," used to insist on a separate tap-room from the +mere "button-makers," on the ground of earning a few more shillings per +week. But we are not yet thorough democrats, my brothers; we do not yet +utterly believe our own loud doctrine of equality; nor shall we till--But I +must not anticipate the stages of my own experience. + + * * * * * + +I complain of no one, again I say--neither of judge, jury, gaolers, or +chaplain. True, imprisonment was the worst possible remedy for my disease +that could have been devised, if, as the new doctrine is, punishments are +inflicted only to reform the criminal. What could prison do for me, but +embitter and confirm all my prejudices? But I do not see what else they +could have done with me while law is what it is, and perhaps ever will be; +dealing with the overt acts of the poor, and never touching the subtler +and more spiritual iniquities of the rich respectable. When shall we see a +nation ruled, not by the law, by the Gospel; not in the letter which kills, +but in the spirit which is love, forgiveness, life? When? God knows! And +God does know. + + * * * * * + +But I did work, during those three years, for months at a time, steadily +and severely; and with little profit, alas! to my temper of mind. I gorged +my intellect, for I could do nothing else. The political questions which +I longed to solve in some way or other, were tabooed by the well-meaning +chaplain. He even forbid me a standard English work on political economy, +which I had written to Mackaye to borrow for me; he was not so careful, it +will be seen hereafter, with foreign books. He meant, of course, to keep my +mind from what he considered at once useless and polluting; but the only +effect of his method was, that all the doubts and questions remained, +rankling and fierce, imperiously demanding my attention, and had to be +solved by my own moody and soured meditations, warped and coloured by the +strong sense of universal wrong. + +Then he deluged me with tracts, weak and well-meaning, which informed +me that "Christians," being "not of this world," had nothing to do with +politics; and preached to me the divine right of kings, passive obedience +to the powers--or impotences--that be, &c., &c., with such success as may +be imagined. I opened them each, read a few sentences, and laid them by. +"They were written by good men, no doubt; but men who had an interest in +keeping up the present system;" at all events by men who knew nothing of +my temptations, my creed, my unbelief; who saw all heaven and earth from a +station antipodal to my own; I had simply nothing to do with them. + +And yet, excellent man! pious, benignant, compassionate! God forbid that I +should, in writing these words, allow myself a desire so base as that of +disparaging thee! However thy words failed of their purpose, that bright, +gentle, earnest face never appeared without bringing balm to the wounded +spirit. Hadst thou not recalled me to humanity, those three years would +have made a savage and madman of me. May God reward thee hereafter! Thou +hast thy reward on earth in the gratitude of many a broken heart bound up, +of drunkards sobered, thieves reclaimed, and outcasts taught to look for a +paternal home denied them here on earth! While such thy deeds, what matter +thine opinions? + +But alas! (for the truth must be told, as a warning to those who have to +face the educated working men,) his opinions did matter to himself. The +good man laboured under the delusion, common enough, of choosing his +favourite weapons from his weakest faculty; and the very inferiority of his +intellect prevented him from seeing where his true strength lay. He _would_ +argue; he would try and convert me from scepticism by what seemed to him +reasoning, the common figure of which was, what logicians, I believe, call +begging the question; and the common method, what they call _ignoratio +elenchi_--shooting at pigeons, while crows are the game desired. He always +started by demanding my assent to the very question which lay at the bottom +of my doubts. He would wrangle and wrestle blindly up and down, with tears +of earnestness in his eyes, till he had lost his temper, as far as it was +possible for one so angel-guarded as he seemed to be; and then, when he +found himself confused, contradicting his own words, making concessions at +which he shuddered, for the sake of gaining from me assents which he found +out the next moment I understood in quite a different sense from his, he +would suddenly shift his ground, and try to knock me down authoritatively +with a single text of Scripture; when all the while I wanted proof that +Scripture had any authority at all. + +He carefully confined himself, too, throughout, to the dogmatic phraseology +of the pulpit; while I either did not understand, or required justification +for, the strange, far-fetched, technical meanings, which he attached to his +expressions. If he would only have talked English!--if clergymen would only +preach in English!--and then they wonder that their sermons have no effect! +Their notion seems to be, as my good chaplain's was, that the teacher is +not to condescend to the scholar, much less to become all things to all +men, if by any means he may save some; but that he has a right to demand +that the scholar shall ascend to him before he is taught; that he shall +raise himself up of his own strength into the teacher's region of thought +as well as feeling; to do for himself, in short, under penalty of being +called an unbeliever, just what the preacher professes to do for him. + +At last, he seemed dimly to discover that I could not acquiesce in his +conclusions, while I denied his premises; and so he lent me, in an +ill-starred moment, "Paley's Evidences," and some tracts of the last +generation against Deism. I read them, and remained, as hundreds more have +done, just where I was before. + +"Was Paley," I asked, "a really good and pious man?" + +The really good and pious man hemmed and hawed. + +"Because, if he was not, I can't trust a page of his special pleading, let +it look as clever as the whole Old Bailey in one." + +Besides, I never denied the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, or his +apostles. I doubted the myths and doctrines, which I believed to have been +gradually built up round the true story. The fact was, he was, like most of +his class, "attacking extinct Satans," fighting manfully against Voltaire, +Volney, and Tom Paine; while I was fighting for Strauss, Hennell, and +Emerson. And, at last, he gave me up for some weeks as a hopeless infidel, +without ever having touched the points on which I disbelieved. He had never +read Strauss--hardly even heard of him; and, till clergymen make up their +minds to do that, and to answer Strauss also, they will, as he did, leave +the heretic artisan just where they found him. + +The bad effect which all this had on my mind may easily be conceived. I +felt myself his intellectual superior. I tripped him up, played with him, +made him expose his weaknesses, till I really began to despise him. May +Heaven forgive me for it! But it was not till long afterwards that I began, +on looking back, to see how worthless was any superior cleverness of mine +before his superior moral and spiritual excellence. That was just what +he would not let me see at the time. I was worshipping intellect, mere +intellect; and thence arose my doubts; and he tried to conquer them by +exciting the very faculty which had begotten them. When will the clergy +learn that their strength is in action, and not in argument? If they are +to reconvert the masses, it must be by noble deeds, as Carlyle says; "not +by noisy theoretic laudation of _a_ Church, but by silent practical +demonstration of _the_ Church." + + * * * * * + +But, the reader may ask, where was your Bible all this time? + +Yes--there was a Bible in my cell--and the chaplain read to me, both +privately and in chapel, such portions of it as he thought suited my case, +or rather his utterly-mistaken view thereof. But, to tell the truth, I +cared not to read or listen. Was it not the book of the aristocrats--of +kings and priests, passive obedience, and the slavery of the intellect? +Had I been thrown under the influence of the more educated Independents +in former years, I might have thought differently. They, at least, have +contrived, with what logical consistence I know not, to reconcile orthodox +Christianity with unflinching democratic opinions. But such was not my lot. +My mother, as I said in my first chapter, had become a Baptist; because +she believed that sect, and as I think rightly, to be the only one which +logically and consistently carries out the Calvinistic theory; and now I +looked back upon her delight in Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jehu, only as +the mystic application of rare exceptions to the fanaticism of a chosen +few--the elect--the saints, who, as the fifth-monarchy men held, were +one day to rule the world with a rod of iron. And so I fell--willingly, +alas!--into the vulgar belief about the politics of Scripture, common +alike--strange unanimity!--to Infidel and Churchman. The great idea that +the Bible is the history of mankind's deliverance from all tyranny, outward +as well as inward; of the Jews, as the one free constitutional people among +a world of slaves and tyrants; of their ruin, as the righteous fruit of a +voluntary return to despotism; of the New Testament, as the good news that +freedom, brotherhood, and equality, once confided only to Judæa and to +Greece, and dimly seen even there, was henceforth to be the right of all +mankind, the law of all society--who was there to tell me that? Who is +there now to go forth and tell it to the millions who have suffered, and +doubted, and despaired like me, and turn the hearts of the disobedient to +the wisdom of the just, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come? +Again I ask--who will go forth and preach that Gospel, and save his native +land? + +But, as I said before, I read, and steadily. In the first place, I, for the +first time in my life, studied Shakspeare throughout; and found out now the +treasure which I had overlooked. I assure my readers I am not going to give +a lecture on him here, as I was minded to have done. Only, as I am asking +questions, who will write us a "People's Commentary on Shakspeare"? + +Then I waded, making copious notes and extracts, through the whole of Hume, +and Hallam's "Middle Ages," and "Constitutional History," and found them +barren to my soul. When (to ask a third and last question) will some +man, of the spirit of Carlyle--one who is not ashamed to acknowledge the +intervention of a God, a Providence, even of a devil, in the affairs of +men--arise, and write a "People's History of England"? + +Then I laboured long months at learning French, for the mere purpose of +reading French political economy after my liberation. But at last, in my +impatience, I wrote to Sandy to send me Proudhon and Louis Blanc, on the +chance of their passing the good chaplain's censorship--and behold, they +passed! He had never heard their names! He was, I suspect, utterly ignorant +of French, and afraid of exposing his ignorance by venturing to criticise. +As it was, I was allowed peaceable possession of them till within a few +months of my liberation, with such consequences as may be imagined: +and then, to his unfeigned terror and horror, he discovered, in some +periodical, that he had been leaving in my hands books which advocated "the +destruction of property," and therefore, in his eyes, of all which is moral +or sacred in earth or heaven! I gave them up without a struggle, so really +painful was the good soul's concern and the reproaches which he heaped, not +on me--he never reproached me in his life--but on himself, for having so +neglected his duty. + +Then I read hard for a few months at physical science--at Zoology and +Botany, and threw it aside again in bitterness of heart. It was too bitter +to be tantalized with the description of Nature's wondrous forms, and I +there a prisoner between those four white walls. + +Then I set to work to write an autobiography--at least to commit to paper +in regular order the most striking incidents and conversations which I +could recollect, and which I had noted down as they occurred in my diary. +From that source I have drawn nearly the whole of my history up to this +point. For the rest I must trust to memory--and, indeed, the strange deeds +and sufferings, and yet stranger revelations, of the last few months, have +branded themselves deep enough upon my brain. I need not hope, or fear, +that aught of them should slip my memory. + + * * * * * + +So went the weary time. Week after week, month after month, summer after +summer, I scored the days off, like a lonely school boy, on the pages of a +calendar; and day by day I went to my window, and knelt there, gazing at +the gable and the cedar-tree. That was my only recreation. Sometimes, at +first, my eyes used to wander over the wide prospect of rich lowlands, and +farms, and hamlets, and I used to amuse myself with conjectures about the +people who lived in them, and walked where they liked on God's earth: but +soon I hated to look at the country; its perpetual change and progress +mocked the dreary sameness of my dungeon. It was bitter, maddening, to see +the grey boughs grow green with leaves, and the green fade to autumnal +yellow, and the grey boughs reappear again, and I still there! The dark +sleeping fallows bloomed with emerald blades of corn, and then the corn +grew deep and crisp, and blackened before the summer breeze, in "waves of +shadow," as Mr. Tennyson says in one of his most exquisite lyrics; and then +the fields grew white to harvest day by day, and I saw the rows of sheaves +rise one by one, and the carts crawling homeward under their load. I could +almost hear the merry voices of the children round them--children that +could go into the woods, and pick wild flowers, and I still there! No--I +would look at nothing but the gable and the cedar-tree, and the tall +cathedral towers; there was no change in them--they did not laugh at me. + +But she who lived beneath them? Months and seasons crawled along, and yet +no sign or hint of her! I was forgotten, forsaken! And yet I gazed, and +gazed. I could not forget her; I could not forget what she had been to me. +Eden was still there, though I was shut out from it for ever: and so, like +a widower over the grave of her he loves, morning and evening I watched the +gable and the cedar-tree. + +And my cousin? Ah, that was the thought, the only thought, which made +my life intolerable! What might he not be doing in the meantime? I knew +his purpose, I knew his power. True, I had never seen a hint, a glance, +which could have given him hope; but he had three whole years to win her +in--three whole years, and I fettered, helpless, absent! "Fool! could I +have won her if I had been free? At least, I would have tried: we would +have fought it fairly out, on even ground; we would have seen which was the +strongest, respectability and cunning, or the simplicity of genius. But +now!"--And I tore at the bars of the window, and threw myself on the floor +of my cell, and longed to die. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +THE NEW CHURCH. + + +In a poor suburb of the city, which I could see well enough from my little +window, a new Gothic church was building. When I first took up my abode +in the cell, it was just begun--the walls had hardly risen above the +neighbouring sheds and garden-fences. But month after month I had watched +it growing; I had seen one window after another filled with tracery, one +buttress after another finished off with its carved pinnacle; then I had +watched the skeleton of the roof gradually clothed in tiling; and then the +glazing of the windows--some of them painted, I could see, from the iron +network which was placed outside them the same day. Then the doors were put +up--were they going to finish that handsome tower? No: it was left with its +wooden cap, I suppose for further funds. But the nave, and the deep chancel +behind it, were all finished, and surmounted by a cross,--and beautifully +enough the little sanctuary looked, in the virgin-purity of its spotless +freestone. For eighteen months I watched it grow before my eyes--and I was +still in my cell! + +And then there was a grand procession of surplices and lawn sleeves; and +among them I fancied I distinguished the old dean's stately figure, and +turned my head away, and looked again, and fancied I distinguished another +figure--it must have been mere imagination--the distance was far too +great for me to identify any one; but I could not get out of my head the +fancy--say rather, the instinct--that it was my cousin's; and that it was +my cousin whom I saw daily after that, coming out and going in--when the +bell rang to morning and evening prayers--for there were daily services +there, and saint's day services, and Lent services, and three services on a +Sunday, and six or seven on Good Friday and Easter-day. The little musical +bell above the chancel-arch seemed always ringing: and still that figure +haunted me like a nightmare, ever coming in and going out about its +priestly calling--and I still in my cell! If it should be he!--so close to +her! I shuddered at the thought; and, just because it was so intolerable, +it clung to me, and tormented me, and kept me awake at nights, till I +became utterly unable to study quietly, and spent hours at the narrow +window, watching for the very figure I loathed to see. + +And then a Gothic school-house rose at the churchyard end, and troops of +children poured in and out, and women came daily for alms; and when the +frosts came on, every morning I saw a crowd, and soup carried away in +pitchers, and clothes and blankets given away; the giving seemed endless, +boundless; and I thought of the times of the Roman Empire and the +"sportula," when the poor had got to live upon the alms of the rich, more +and more, year by year--till they devoured their own devourers, and the end +came; and I shuddered. And yet it was a pleasant sight, as every new church +is to the healthy-minded man, let his religious opinions be what they +may. A fresh centre of civilization, mercy, comfort for weary hearts, +relief from frost and hunger; a fresh centre of instruction, humanizing, +disciplining, however meagre in my eyes, to hundreds of little savage +spirits; altogether a pleasant sight, even to me there in my cell. And +I used to wonder at the wasted power of the Church--her almost entire +monopoly of the pulpits, the schools, the alms of England; and then thank +Heaven, somewhat prematurely, that she knew and used so little her vast +latent power for the destruction of liberty. + +Or for its realization? + +Ay, that is the question! We shall not see it solved--at least, I never +shall. + +But still that figure haunted me; all through that winter I saw it, +chatting with old women, patting children's heads, walking to the church +with ladies; sometimes with a tiny, tripping figure.--I did not dare to let +myself fancy who that might be. + + * * * * * + +December passed, and January came. I had now only two months more before my +deliverance. One day I seemed to myself to have passed a whole life in that +narrow room; and the next, the years and months seemed short and blank as a +night's sleep on waking; and there was no salient point in all my memory, +since that last sight of Lillian's smile, and the faces and the window +whirling round me as I fell. + +At last a letter came from Mackaye. "Ye speired for news o' your +cousin--an' I find he's a neebour o' yours; ca'd to a new kirk i' the city +o' your captivity--an' na stickit minister he makes, forbye he's ane o' +these new Puseyite sectarians, to judge by your uncle's report. I met +the auld bailie-bodie on the street, and was gaun to pass him by, but he +was sae fou o' good news he could na but stop an' ha' a crack wi' me on +politics; for we ha' helpit thegither in certain municipal clamjamfries o' +late. An' he told me your cousin wins honour fast, an' maun surely die a +bishop--puir bairn! An' besides that he's gaun to be married the spring. +I dinna mind the leddy's name; but there's tocher wi' lass o' his I'll +warrant. He's na laird o' Cockpen, for a penniless lass wi' a long +pedigree." + +As I sat meditating over this news--which made the torment of suspicion and +suspense more intolerable than ever--behold a postscript added some two +days after. + +"Oh! Oh! Sic news! gran news! news to make baith the ears o' him that +heareth it to tingle. God is God, an' no the deevil after a'! Louis +Philippe is doun!--doun, doun, like a dog, and the republic's proclaimed, +an' the auld villain here in England, they say, a wanderer an' a beggar. I +ha' sent ye the paper o' the day. Ps.--73, 37, 12. Oh, the Psalms are full +o't! Never say the Bible's no true, mair. I've been unco faithless mysel', +God forgive me! I got grieving to see the wicked in sic prosperity. I did +na gang into the sanctuary eneugh, an' therefore I could na see the end of +these men--how He does take them up suddenly after all, an' cast them doun: +vanish they do, perish, an' come to a fearful end. Yea, like as a dream +when one awaketh, so shalt thou make their image to vanish out of the city. +Oh, but it's a day o' God! An' yet I'm sair afraid for they puir feckless +French. I ha' na faith, ye ken, in the Celtic blude, an' its spirit o' +lees. The Saxon spirit o' covetize is a grewsome house-fiend, and sae's our +Norse speerit o' shifts an' dodges; but the spirit o' lees is warse. Puir +lustful Reubens that they are!--unstable as water, they shall not excel. +Well, well--after all, there is a God that judgeth the earth; an' when a +man kens that, he's learnt eneugh to last him till he dies." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +THE TOWER OF BABEL. + + + A glorious people vibrated again + The lightning of the nations; Liberty + From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er France, + Scattering contagious fire into the sky, + Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay; + And in the rapid plumes of song + Clothed itself sublime and strong. + +Sublime and strong? Alas! not so. An outcast, heartless, faithless, and +embittered, I went forth from my prison.--But yet Louis Philippe had +fallen! And as I whirled back to Babylon and want, discontent and discord, +my heart was light, my breath came thick and fierce.--The incubus of France +had fallen! and from land to land, like the Beacon-fire which leaped from +peak to peak proclaiming Troy's downfall, passed on the glare of burning +idols, the crash of falling anarchies. Was I mad, sinful? Both--and yet +neither. Was I mad and sinful, if on my return to my old haunts, amid the +grasp of loving hands and the caresses of those who called me in their +honest flattery a martyr and a hero--what things, as Carlyle says, men will +fall down and worship in their extreme need!--was I mad and sinful, if +daring hopes arose, and desperate words were spoken, and wild eyes read in +wild eyes the thoughts they dare not utter? "Liberty has risen from the +dead, and we too will be free!" + +Yes, mad and sinful; therefore are we as we are. Yet God has forgiven +us--perhaps so have those men whose forgiveness is alone worth having. + +Liberty? And is that word a dream, a lie, the watchword only of rebellious +fiends, as bigots say even now? Our forefathers spoke not so-- + + The shadow of her coming fell + On Saxon Alfred's olive-tinctured brow. + +Had not freedom, progressive, expanding, descending, been the glory and the +strength of England? Were Magna Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act, Hampden's +resistance to ship-money, and the calm, righteous might of 1688--were they +all futilities and fallacies? Ever downwards, for seven hundred years, +welling from the heaven-watered mountain peaks of wisdom, had spread the +stream of liberty. The nobles had gained their charter from John; the +middle classes from William of Orange: was not the time at hand, when from +a queen, more gentle, charitable, upright, spotless, than had ever sat on +the throne of England, the working masses in their turn should gain their +Charter? + +If it was given, the gift was hers: if it was demanded to the uttermost, +the demand would be made, not on her, but on those into whose hands her +power had passed, the avowed representatives neither of the Crown nor of +the people, but of the very commercial class which was devouring us. + +Such was our dream. Insane and wicked were the passions which accompanied +it; insane and wicked were the means we chose; and God in his mercy to us, +rather than to Mammon, triumphant in his iniquity, fattening his heart +even now for a spiritual day of slaughter more fearful than any physical +slaughter which we in our folly had prepared for him--God frustrated them. + +We confess our sins. Shall the Chartist alone be excluded from the promise, +"If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, +and cleanse us from all unrighteousness"? + +And yet, were there no excuses for us? I do not say for myself--and yet +three years of prison might be some excuse for a soured and harshened +spirit--but I will not avail myself of the excuse; for there were men, +stancher Chartists than ever I had been--men who had suffered not only +imprisonment, but loss of health and loss of fortune; men whose influence +with the workmen was far wider than my own, and whose temptations were +therefore all the greater, who manfully and righteously kept themselves +aloof from all those frantic schemes, and now reap their reward, in being +acknowledged as the true leaders of the artizans, while the mere preachers +of sedition are scattered to the winds. + +But were there no excuses for the mass? Was there no excuse in the spirit +with which the English upper classes regarded the continental revolutions? +No excuse in the undisguised dislike, fear, contempt, which they expressed +for that very sacred name of Liberty, which had been for ages the pride of +England and her laws-- + + The old laws of England, they + Whose reverend heads with age are grey-- + Children of a wiser day-- + And whose solemn voice must be + Thine own echo, Liberty! + +for which, according to the latest improvements, is now substituted a +bureaucracy of despotic commissions? Shame upon those who sneered at the +very name of her to whom they owed the wealth they idolize! who cry down +liberty because God has given it to them in such priceless abundance, +boundless as the sunshine and the air of heaven, that they are become +unconscious of it as of the elements by which they live! Woe to those who +despise the gift of God! Woe to those who have turned His grace into a +cloak for tyranny; who, like the Jews of old, have trampled under foot His +covenant at the very moment that they were asserting their exclusive right +to it, and denying his all-embracing love! + +And were there no excuses, too, in the very arguments which +nineteen-twentieths of the public press used to deter us from following the +example of the Continent? If there had been one word of sympathy with the +deep wrongs of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary--one attempt to discriminate +the righteous and God-inspired desire of freedom, from man's furious and +self-willed perversion of it, we would have listened to them. But, instead, +what was the first, last, cardinal, crowning argument?--"The cost of +sedition!" "Revolutions interfered with trade!" and therefore they were +damnable! Interfere with the food and labour of the millions? The millions +would take the responsibility of that upon themselves. If the party of +order cares so much for the millions, why had they left them what they +are? No: it was with the profits of the few that revolutions interfered; +with the Divine right, not so much of kings, but of money-making. They +hampered Mammon, the very fiend who is devouring the masses. The one end +and aim of existence was, the maintenance of order--of peace and room to +make money in. And therefore Louis' spies might make France one great +inquisition-hell; German princelets might sell their country piecemeal to +French or Russian! the Hungarian constitution, almost the counterpart of +our own, might be sacrificed at the will of an idiot or villain; Papal +misgovernment might continue to render Rome a worse den of thieves than +even Papal superstition could have made it without the addition of tyranny; +but Order must be maintained, for how else could the few make money out of +the labour of the many? These were their own arguments. Whether they were +likely to conciliate the workman to the powers that be, by informing him +that those powers were avowedly the priests of the very system which was +crushing him, let the reader judge. + +The maintenance of order--of the order of disorder--that was to be the new +God before whom the working classes were to bow in spell-bound awe; an idol +more despicable and empty than even that old divine right of tyrants, newly +applied by some well-meaning but illogical personages, not merely as of old +to hereditary sovereigns, but to Louis Philippes, usurers, upstarts--why +not hereafter to demagogues? Blindfold and desperate bigots! who would +actually thus, in the imbecility of terror, deify that very right of the +physically strongest and cunningest, which, if anything, is antichrist +itself. That argument against sedition, the workmen heard; and, +recollecting 1688, went on their way, such as it was, unheeding. + +One word more, even at the risk of offending many whom I should be very +sorry to offend, and I leave this hateful discussion. Let it ever be +remembered that the working classes considered themselves deceived, +cajoled, by the passers of the Reform Bill; that they cherished--whether +rightly or wrongly it is now too late to ask--a deep-rooted grudge +against those who had, as they thought, made their hopes and passions a +stepping-stone towards their own selfish ends. They were told to support +the Reform Bill, not only on account of its intrinsic righteousness--which +God forbid that I should deny--but because it was the first of a glorious +line of steps towards their enfranchisement; and now the very men who told +them this, talked peremptorily of "finality," showed themselves the most +dogged and careless of conservatives, and pooh-poohed away every attempt at +further enlargement of the suffrage. They were told to support it as the +remedy for their own social miseries; and behold those miseries were year +by year becoming deeper, more wide-spread, more hopeless; their entreaties +for help and mercy, in 1842, and at other times, had been lazily laid by +unanswered; and almost the only practical efforts for their deliverance had +been made by a Tory nobleman, the honoured and beloved Lord Ashley. They +found that they had, in helping to pass the Reform Bill, only helped to +give power to the two very classes who crushed them--the great labour +kings, and the small shopkeepers; that they had blindly armed their +oppressors with the additional weapon of an ever-increasing political +majority. They had been told, too (let that never be forgotten), that in +order to carry the Reform Bill, sedition itself was lawful; they had seen +the master-manufacturers themselves give the signal for the plug-riots by +stopping their mills. Their vanity, ferocity, sense of latent and fettered +power, pride of numbers, and physical strength, had been nattered and +pampered by those who now only talked of grape-shot and bayonets. They had +heard the Reform Bill carried by the threats of men of rank and power, +that "Manchester should march upon London." Were their masters, then, to +have a monopoly in sedition, as in everything else? What had been fair in +order to compel the Reform Bill, must surely be fairer still to compel +the fulfilment of Reform Bill pledges? And so, imitating the example of +those whom they fancied had first used and then deserted them, they, in +their madness, concocted a rebellion, not primarily against the laws and +constitution of their land, but against Mammon--against that accursed +system of competition, slavery of labour, absorption of the small +capitalists by the large ones, and of the workman by all, which is, and +was, and ever will be, their internecine foe. Silly and sanguinary enough +were their schemes, God knows! and bootless enough had they succeeded; +for nothing nourishes in the revolutionary atmosphere but that lowest +embodiment of Mammon, "the black pool of Agio," and its money-gamblers. But +the battle remains still to be fought; the struggle is internecine; only no +more with weapons of flesh and blood, but with a mightier weapon--with that +association which is the true bane of Mammon--the embodiment of brotherhood +and love. + +We should have known that before the tenth of April? Most true, reader--but +wrath is blindness. You too surely have read more wisdom than you have +practised yet; seeing that you have your Bible, and perhaps, too, Mill's +"Political Economy." Have you perused therein the priceless Chapter "On +the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes"? If not, let me give you +the reference--vol. ii, p. 315, of the Second Edition. Read it, thou +self-satisfied Mammon, and perpend; for it is both a prophecy and a doom! + + * * * * * + +But, the reader may ask, how did you, with your experience of the reason, +honesty, moderation, to be expected of mobs, join in a plan which, if it +had succeeded, must have let loose on those "who had" in London, the whole +flood of those "who had not"? + +The reader shall hear. My story may be instructive, as a type of the +feelings of thousands beside me. + +It was the night after I had returned from D * * * *; sitting in +Crossthwaite's little room, I had heard with mingled anxiety and delight +the plans of my friends. They were about to present a monster petition in +favour of the Charter; to accompany it _en masse_ to the door of the House +of Commons; and if it was refused admittance--why, then, ulterior measures +were the only hope. "And they will refuse it," said Crossthwaite; "they're +going, I hear, to revive some old law or other, that forbids processions +within such and such a distance of the House of Commons. Let them forbid! +To carry arms, to go in public procession, to present petitions openly, +instead of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table unopened +by some careless member--they're our rights, and we'll have them. There's +no use mincing the matter: it's just like the old fable of the farmer and +his wheat--if we want it reaped, we must reap it ourselves. Public opinion, +and the pressure from without, are the only things which have carried any +measure in England for the last twenty years. Neither Whigs nor Tories deny +it: the governed govern their governors--that's the 'ordre du jour' just +now--and we'll have our turn at it! We'll give those House of Commons +oligarchs--those tools of the squires and shopkeepers--we'll give them a +taste of pleasure from without, as shall make the bar of the house crack +again. And then to be under arms, day and night, till the Charter's +granted." + +"And if it is refused?" + +"Fight! that's the word, and no other. There's no other hope. No +Charter,--No social reforms! We must give them ourselves, for no one else +will. Look there, and judge for yourself!" + +He pulled a letter out from among his papers, and threw it across to me. + +"What's this?" + +"That came while you were in gaol. There don't want many words about it. +We sent up a memorial to government about the army and police clothing. We +told 'em how it was the lowest, most tyrannous, most ill-paid of all the +branches of slop-making; how men took to it only when they were starved +out of everything else. We entreated them to have mercy on us--entreated +them to interfere between the merciless contractors and the poor wretches +on whose flesh and blood contractors, sweaters, and colonels, were all +fattening: and there's the answer we got. Look at it; read it! Again and +again I've been minded to placard it on the walls, that all the world +might see the might and the mercies of the government. Read it! 'Sorry +to say that it is utterly out of the power of her Majesty's * * * *s to +interfere--as the question of wages rests entirely between the contractor +and the workmen.'" + +"He lies!" I said. "If it did, the workmen might put a pistol to the +contractor's head, and say--'You shall not tempt the poor, needy, greedy, +starving workers to their own destruction, and the destruction of their +class; you shall not offer these murderous, poisonous prices. If we saw +you offering our neighbour a glass of laudanum, we would stop you at all +risks--and we will stop you now.' No! no! John, the question don't +lie between workman and contractor, but between workman and +contractor-plus-grape-and-bayonets!" + +"Look again. There's worse comes after that. 'If government did interfere, +it would not benefit the workman, as his rate of wages depends entirely +on the amount of competition between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my +dear children, you must eat each other; we are far too fond parents to +interfere with so delightful an amusement! Curse them--sleek, hard-hearted, +impotent do-nothings! They confess themselves powerless against +competition--powerless against the very devil that is destroying us, faster +and faster every year! They can't help us on a single point. They can't +check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population +which exists. They daren't give us a comprehensive emigration scheme. They +daren't lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market. They daren't +interfere between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They are +cowards, and like cowards they shall fall!" + +"Ay--like cowards they shall fall!" I answered; and from that moment I was +a rebel and a conspirator. + +"And will the country join us?" + +"The cities will; never mind the country. They are too weak to resist their +own tyrants--and they are too weak to resist us. The country's always +drivelling in the background. A country-party's sure to be a party of +imbecile bigots. Nobody minds them." + +I laughed. "It always was so, John. When Christianity first spread, it was +in the cities--till a pagan, a villager, got to mean a heathen for ever and +ever." + +"And so it was in the French revolution; when Popery had died out of all +the rest of France, the priests and the aristocrats still found their dupes +in the remote provinces." + +"The sign of a dying system that, to be sure. Woe to Toryism and the +Church of England, and everything else, when it gets to boasting that its +stronghold is still the hearts of the agricultural poor. It is the cities, +John, the cities, where the light dawns first--where man meets man, and +spirit quickens spirit, and intercourse breeds knowledge, and knowledge +sympathy, and sympathy enthusiasm, combination, power irresistible; while +the agriculturists remain ignorant, selfish, weak, because they are +isolated from each other. Let the country go. The towns shall win the +Charter for England! And then for social reform, sanitary reform, ædile +reform, cheap food, interchange of free labour, liberty, equality, and +brotherhood for ever!" + +Such was our Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven. To understand +the allurement of that dream, you must have lain, like us, for years in +darkness and the pit. You must have struggled for bread, for lodging, for +cleanliness, for water, for education--all that makes life worth living +for--and found them becoming, year by year, more hopelessly impossible, if +not to yourself, yet still to the millions less gifted than yourself; you +must have sat in darkness and the shadow of death, till you are ready to +welcome any ray of light, even though it should be the glare of a volcano. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +A PATRIOT'S REWARD. + + +I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite and I strode +back together from the Convention. We had walked on some way arm in arm +in silence, under the crushing and embittering sense of having something +to conceal--something, which if those who passed us so carelessly in +the street had known--! It makes a villain and a savage of a man, that +consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it was a hateful one!--a +dark and desperate necessity, which we tried to call by noble names, that +faltered on our lips as we pronounced them; for the spirit of God was not +in us; and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lodestar of duty, +weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult, and flame, +and blood. + +"It must be done!--it shall be done!--it will be done!" burst out John, at +last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of +his own words. "I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the +way as clear as day." + +I felt nothing but the dogged determination of despair. "It must be tried, +if the worst comes to the worst--but I have no hope. I read Somerville's +answer to that Colonel Macerone. Ten years ago he showed it was impossible. +We cannot stand against artillery; we have no arms." + +"I'll tell you where to buy plenty. There's a man, Power, or Bower, he's +sold hundreds in the last few days; and he understands the matter. He tells +us we're certain, safe. There are hundreds of young men in the government +offices ready to join, if we do but succeed at first. It all depends on +that. The first hour settles the fate of a revolution." + +"If we succeed, yes--the cowardly world will always side with the +conquering party; and we shall have every pickpocket and ruffian in our +wake, plundering in the name of liberty and order." + +"Then we'll shoot them like dogs, as the French did! 'Mort aux voleurs' +shall be the word!" + +"Unless they shoot us. The French had a national guard, who had property +to lose, and took care of it. The shopkeepers here will be all against us; +they'll all be sworn in special constables, to a man; and between them and +the soldiers, we shall have three to one upon us." + +"Oh! that Power assures me the soldiers will fraternize. He says there are +three regiments at least have promised solemnly to shoot their officers, +and give up their arms to the mob." + +"Very important, if true--and very scoundrelly, too, I'd sooner be shot +myself by fair fighting, than see officers shot by cowardly treason." + +"Well, it's ugly. I like fair play as well as any man. But it can't be +done. There must be a surprise, a _coup de main_, as the French say" (poor +Crossthwaite was always quoting French in those days). "Once show our +strength--burst upon the tyrants like a thunderclap; and then!-- + + "Men of England, heirs of glory, + Heroes of unwritten story, + Rise, shake off the chains like dew + Which in sleep have fallen on you! + Ye are many, they are few!" + +"That's just what I am afraid they are not. Let's go and find out this man +Power, and hear his authority for the soldier-story. Who knows him?" + +"Why, Mike Kelly and he had been a deal together of late, Kelly's a true +heart now--a true Irishman ready for anything. Those Irish are the boys, +after all--though I don't deny they do bluster and have their way a little +too much in the Convention. But still Ireland's wrongs are England's. We +have the same oppressors. We must make common cause against the tyrants." + +"I wish to Heaven they would just have stayed at home, and ranted on the +other side of the water; they had their own way there, and no Mammonite +middle-class to keep them down; and yet they never did an atom of good. +Their eloquence is all bombast, and what's more, Crossthwaite, though there +are some fine fellows among them, nine-tenths are liars--liars in grain, +and you know it--" + +Crossthwaite turned angrily to me. "Why, you are getting as reactionary as +old Mackaye himself!" + +"I am not--and he is not. I am ready to die on a barricade to-morrow, if +it comes to that. I haven't six months' lease of life--I am going into +consumption; and a bullet is as easy a death as spitting up my lungs +piecemeal. But I despise these Irish, because I can't trust them--they +can't trust each other--they can't trust themselves. You know as well as I +that you can't get common justice done in Ireland, because you can depend +upon no man's oath. You know as well as I, that in Parliament or out, nine +out of ten of them will stick at no lie, even if it has been exposed and +refuted fifty times over, provided it serves the purpose of the moment; and +I often think that, after all, Mackaye's right, and what's the matter with +Ireland is just that and nothing else--that from the nobleman in his +castle to the beggar on his dunghill, they are a nation of liars, John +Crossthwaite!" + +"Sandy's a prejudiced old Scotchman." + +"Sandy's a wiser man than you or I, and you know it." + +"Oh, I don't deny that; but he's getting old, and I think he has been +failing in his mind of late." + +"I'm afraid he's failing in his health; he has never been the same man +since they hooted him down in John Street. But he hasn't altered in his +opinions one jot; and I'll tell you what--I believe he's right. I'll die in +this matter like a man, because it's the cause of liberty; but I've fearful +misgivings about it, just because Irishmen are at the head of it." + +"Of course they are--they have the deepest wrongs; and that makes them +most earnest in the cause of right. The sympathy of suffering, as they say +themselves, has bound them to the English working man against the same +oppressors." + +"Then let them fight those oppressors at home, and we'll do the same: +that's the true way to show sympathy. Charity begins at home. They are +always crying 'Ireland for the Irish'; why can't they leave England for the +English?" + +"You're envious of O'Connor's power!" + +"Say that again, John Crossthwaite, and we part for ever!" And I threw off +his arm indignantly. + +"No--but--don't let's quarrel, my dear old fellow--now, that perhaps, +perhaps we may never meet again--but I can't bear to hear the Irish abused. +They're noble, enthusiastic, generous fellows. If we English had half as +warm hearts, we shouldn't be as we are now; and O'Connor's a glorious +man, I tell you. Just think of him, the descendant of the ancient kings, +throwing away his rank, his name, all he had in the world, for the cause of +the suffering millions!" + +"That's a most aristocratic speech, John," said I, smiling, in spite of my +gloom. "So you keep a leader because he's descended from ancient kings, do +you? I should prefer him just because he was not--just because he was a +working man, and come of workmen's blood. We shall see whether he's stanch +after all. To my mind, little Cuffy's worth a great deal more, as far as +earnestness goes." + +"Oh! Cuffy's a low-bred, uneducated fellow." + +"Aristocrat again, John!" said I, as we went up-stairs to Kelly's room. And +Crossthwaite did not answer. + +There was so great a hubbub inside Kelly's room, of English, French, and +Irish, all talking at once, that we knocked at intervals for full five +minutes, unheard by the noisy crew; and I, in despair, was trying the +handle, which was fast, when, to my astonishment, a heavy blow was struck +on the panel from the inside, and the point of a sharp instrument driven +right through, close to my knees, with the exclamation-- + +"What do you think o' that, now, in a policeman's bread-basket?" + +"I think," answered I, as loud as I dare, and as near the dangerous door, +"if I intended really to use it, I wouldn't make such a fool's noise about +it." + +There was a dead silence; the door was hastily opened, and Kelly's nose +poked out; while we, in spite of the horribleness of the whole thing, could +not help laughing at his face of terror. Seeing who we were he welcomed +us in at once, into a miserable apartment, full of pikes and daggers, +brandished by some dozen miserable, ragged, half-starved artizans. +Three-fourths, I saw at once, were slop-working tailors. There was a +bloused and bearded Frenchman or two; but the majority were, as was to have +been expected, the oppressed, the starved, the untaught, the despairing, +the insane; "the dangerous classes," which society creates, and then +shrinks in horror, like Frankenstein, from the monster her own clumsy +ambition has created. Thou Frankenstein Mammon! hast thou not had warnings +enough, either to make thy machines like men, or stop thy bungling, and let +God make them for Himself? + +I will not repeat what I heard there. There is many a frantic ruffian +of that night now sitting "in his right mind"--though not yet +"clothed"--waiting for God's deliverance, rather than his own. + +We got Kelly out of the room into the street, and began inquiring of +him the whereabouts of this said Bower or Power. "He didn't know,"--the +feather-headed Irishman that he was!--"Faix, by-the-by, he'd forgotten--an' +he went to look for him at the place he tould him, and they didn't know +sich a one there--" + +"Oh, oh! Mr. Power has an _alibi_, then? Perhaps an _alias_ too?" + +"He didn't know his name rightly. Some said it was Brown; but he was a +broth of a boy--a thrue people's man. Bedad, he gov' away arms afthen and +afthen to them that couldn't buy 'em. An' he's as free-spoken--och, but +he's put me into the confidence! Come down the street a bit, and I'll tell +yees--I'll be Lord-Lieutenant o' Dublin Castle meself, if it succades, as +shure as there's no snakes in ould Ireland, an' revenge her wrongs ankle +deep in the bhlood o' the Saxon! Whirroo! for the marthyred memory o' the +three hundred thousint vargens o' Wexford!" + +"Hold your tongue, you ass!" said Crossthwaite, as he clapped his hand over +his mouth, expecting every moment to find us all three in the Rhadamanthine +grasp of a policeman; while I stood laughing, as people will, for mere +disgust at the ridiculous, which almost always intermingles with the +horrible. + +At last, out it came-- + +"Bedad! we're going to do it! London's to be set o' fire in seventeen +places at the same moment, an' I'm to light two of them to me own self, and +make a holycrust--ay, that's the word--o' Ireland's scorpions, to sting +themselves to death in circling flame--" + +"You would not do such a villanous thing?" cried we, both at once. + +"Bedad! but I won't harm a hair o' their heads! Shure, we'll save the women +and childer alive, and run for the fire-ingins our blessed selves, and then +out with the pikes, and seize the Bank and the Tower-- + + "An' av' I lives, I lives victhorious, + An' av' I dies, my soul in glory is; + Love fa--a--are--well!" + +I was getting desperate: the whole thing seemed at once so horrible and so +impossible. There must be some villanous trap at the bottom of it. + +"If you don't tell me more about this fellow Power, Mike," said I, "I'll +blow your brains out on the spot: either you or he are villains." And I +valiantly pulled out my only weapon, the door key, and put it to his head. + +"Och! are you mad, thin? He's a broth of a boy; and I'll tell ye. Shure he +knows all about the red-coats, case he's an arthillery man himself, and +that's the way he's found out his gran' combustible." + +"An artilleryman?" said John. "He told me he was a writer for the press." + +"Bedad, thin, he's mistaken himself intirely; for he tould me with his own +mouth. And I'll show you the thing he sowld me as is to do it. Shure, it'll +set fire to the stones o' the street, av' you pour a bit vitriol on it." + +"Set fire to the stones? I must see that before I believe it." + +"Shure an' ye shall then. Where'll I buy a bit? Sorra a shop is there open +this time o' night; an' troth I forgot the name o' it intirely! Poker o' +Moses, but here's a bit in my pocket!" + +And out of his tattered coat-tail he lugged a flask of powder and a lump +of some cheap chemical salt, whose name I have, I am ashamed to say, +forgotten. + +"You're a pretty fellow to keep such things in the same pocket with +gunpowder!" + +"Come along to Mackaye's," said Crossthwaite. "I'll see to the bottom +of this. Be hanged, but I think the fellow's a cursed _mouchard_--some +government spy!" + +"Spy is he, thin? Och, the thief o' the world! I'll stab him! I'll murther +him! an' burn the town afterwards, all the same." + +"Unless," said I, "just as you've got your precious combustible to blaze +off, up he comes from behind the corner and gives you in charge to a +policeman. It's a villanous trap, you miserable fool, as sure as the moon's +in heaven." + +"Upon my word, I am afraid it is--and I'm trapped too." + +"Blood and turf! thin, it's he that I'll trap, thin. There's two million +free and inlightened Irishmen in London, to avenge my marthyrdom wi' pikes +and baggonets like raving salviges, and blood for blood!" + +"Like savages, indeed!" said I to Crossthwaite, "And pretty savage company +we are keeping. Liberty, like poverty, makes a man acquainted with strange +companions!" + +"And who's made 'em savages? Who has left them savages? That the greatest +nation of the earth has had Ireland in her hands three hundred years--and +her people still to be savages!--if that don't justify a revolution, what +does? Why, it's just because these poor brutes are what they are, that +rebellion becomes a sacred duty. It's for them--for such fools, brutes, as +that there, and the millions more like him, and likely to remain like him, +and I've made up my mind to do or die to-morrow!" + +There was a grand half-truth, distorted, miscoloured in the words, that +silenced me for the time. + +We entered Mackaye's door; strangely enough at that time of night, it stood +wide open. What could be the matter? I heard loud voices in the inner room, +and ran forward calling his name, when, to my astonishment, out past me +rushed a tall man, followed by a steaming kettle, which, missing him, took +full effect on Kelly's chest as he stood in the entry, filling his shoes +with boiling water, and producing a roar that might have been heard at +Temple Bar. + +"What's the matter?" + +"Have I hit him?" said the old man, in a state of unusual excitement. + +"Bedad! it was the man Power! the cursed spy! An' just as I was going to +slate the villain nately, came the kittle, and kilt me all over!" + +"Power? He's as many names as a pickpocket, and as many callings, too, I'll +warrant. He came sneaking in to tell me the sogers were a' ready to gie up +their arms if I'd come forward to them to-morrow. So I tauld him, sin' he +was so sure o't, he'd better gang and tak the arms himsel; an' then he let +out he'd been a policeman--" + +"A policeman!" said both Crossthwaite and Kelly, with strong expletives. + +"A policeman doon in Manchester; I thought I kenned his face fra the first. +And when the rascal saw he'd let out too much, he wanted to make out that +he'd been a' along a spy for the Chartists, while he was makin' believe to +be a spy o' the goovernment's. Sae when he came that far, I just up wi' the +het water, and bleezed awa at him; an' noo I maun gang and het some mair +for my drap toddy." + +Sandy had a little vitriol in the house, so we took the combustible down +into the cellar, and tried it. It blazed up: but burnt the stone as much as +the reader may expect. We next tried it on a lump of wood. It just scorched +the place where it lay, and then went out; leaving poor Kelly perfectly +frantic with rage, terror, and disappointment. He dashed up-stairs, and out +into the street, on a wild-goose chase after the rascal, and we saw no more +of him that night. + +I relate a simple fact. I am afraid--perhaps, for the poor workmen's sake, +I should say I am glad, that it was not an unique one. Villains of this +kind, both in April and in June, mixed among the working men, excited +their worst passions by bloodthirsty declamations and extravagant promises +of success, sold them arms; and then, like the shameless wretch on whose +evidence Cuffy and Jones were principally convicted, bore witness against +their own victims, unblushingly declaring themselves to have been all +along the tools of the government. I entreat all those who disbelieve this +apparently prodigious assertion, to read the evidence given on the trial of +the John Street conspirators, and judge for themselves. + + * * * * * + +"The petition's filling faster than ever!" said Crossthwaite, as that +evening we returned to Mackaye's little back room. + +"Dirt's plenty," grumbled the old man, who had settled himself again to his +pipe, with his feet on the fender, and his head half way up the chimney. + +"Now, or never!" went on Crossthwaite, without minding him; "now, or never! +The manufacturing districts seem more firm than ever." + +"An' words cheap," commented Mackaye, _sotto voce_. + +"Well," I said, "Heaven keep us from the necessity of ulterior measures! +But what must be, must." + +"The government expect it, I can tell you. They're in a pitiable funk, I +hear. One regiment is ordered to Uxbridge already, because they daren't +trust it. They'll find soldiers are men, I do believe, after all." + +"Men they are," said Sandy; "an' therefore they'll no be fools eneugh to +stan' by an' see ye pu' down a' that is, to build up ye yourselves dinna +yet rightly ken what. Men? Ay, an' wi' mair common sense in them than some +that had mair opportunities." + +"I think I've settled everything," went on Crossthwaite, who seemed not to +have heard the last speech--"settled everything--for poor Katie, I mean. +If anything happens to me, she has friends at Cork--she thinks so at +least--and they'd get her out to service somewhere--God knows!" And his +face worked fearfully a minute. + +"Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori!" said I. + +"There are twa methods o' fulfilling that saw, I'm thinkin'. Impreemis, to +shoot your neebour; in secundis, to hang yoursel." + +"What do you mean by grumbling at the whole thing in this way, Mr. Mackaye? +Are you, too, going to shrink back from The Cause, now that liberty is at +the very doors?" + +"Ou, then, I'm stanch eneuch. I ha' laid in my ain stock o' weapons for the +fecht at Armageddon." + +"You don't mean it? What have you got?" + +"A braw new halter, an' a muckle nail. There's a gran' tough beam here +ayont the ingle, will haud me a' crouse and cantie, when the time comes." + +"What on earth do you mean?" asked we both together. + +"Ha' ye looked into the monster-petition?" + +"Of course we have, and signed it too!" + +"Monster? Ay, ferlie! Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen +ademptum. Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne. Leeberty, the bonnie +lassie, wi' a sealgh's fud to her! I'll no sign it. I dinna consort wi' +shoplifters, an' idiots, an' suckin' bairns--wi' long nose, an' short nose, +an' pug nose, an' seventeen Deuks o' Wellington, let alone a baker's dizen +o' Queens. It's no company, that, for a puir auld patriot!" + +"Why, my dear Mackaye," said I, "you know the Reform Bill petitions were +just as bad." + +"And the Anti-Corn-law ones, too, for that matter," said Crossthwaite. "You +know we can't help accidents; the petition will never be looked through." + +"It's always been the plan with Whigs and Tories, too!" + +"I ken that better than ye, I guess." + +"And isn't everything fair in a good cause?" said Crossthwaite. + +"Desperate men really can't be so dainty." + +"How lang ha' ye learnit that deil's lee, Johnnie? Ye were no o' that mind +five years agone, lad. Ha' ye been to Exeter Hall the while? A's fair in +the cause o' Mammon; in the cause o' cheap bread, that means cheap wages; +but in the cause o' God--wae's me, that ever I suld see this day ower +again! ower again! Like the dog to his vomit--just as it was ten, twenty, +fifty year agone. I'll just ha' a petition a' alane to mysel--I, an' a twa +or three honest men. Besides, ye're just eight days ower time wi' it." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Suld ha' sent it in the 1st of April, an' no the 10th; a' fool's day wud +ha' suited wi' it ferlie!" + +"Mr. Mackaye," said Crossthwaite, in a passion, "I shall certainly inform +the Convention of your extraordinary language!" + +"Do, laddie! do, then! An' tell 'em this, too"--and, as he rose, his whole +face and figure assumed a dignity, an awfulness, which I had never seen +before in him--"tell them that ha' driven out * * * * and * * * *, an' +every one that daur speak a word o' common sense, or common humanity--them +that stone the prophets, an' quench the Spirit o' God, and love a lie, an' +them that mak the same--them that think to bring about the reign o' love +an' britherhood wi' pikes an' vitriol bottles, murther an' blasphemy--tell +'em that ane o' fourscore years and mair--ane that has grawn grey in the +people's cause--that sat at the feet o' Cartwright, an' knelt by the +death-bed o' Rabbie Burns--ane that cheerit Burdett as he went to the +Touer, an' spent his wee earnings for Hunt an' Cobbett--ane that beheld the +shaking o' the nations in the Ninety-three, and heard the birth-shriek o' +a newborn world--ane that while he was yet a callant saw Liberty afar off, +an' seeing her was glad, as for a bonny bride, an' followed her through the +wilderness for threescore weary waeful years--sends them the last message +that e'er he'll send on airth: tell 'em that they're the slaves o' warse +than priests and kings--the slaves o' their ain lusts an' passions--the +slaves o' every loud-tongued knave an' mountebank that'll pamper them in +their self-conceit; and that the gude God'll smite 'em down, and bring 'em +to nought, and scatter 'em abroad, till they repent, an' get clean hearts +and a richt speerit within them, and learn His lesson that he's been trying +to teach 'em this threescore years--that the cause o' the people is the +cause o' Him that made the people; an' wae to them that tak' the deevil's +tools to do his wark wi'! Gude guide us!--What was yon, Alton, laddie?" + +"What?" + +"But I saw a spunk o' fire fa' into your bosom! I've na faith in siccan +heathen omens; but auld carlins wud say it's a sign o' death within the +year--save ye from it, my puir misguidit bairn! Aiblins a fire-flaught o' +my een, it might be--I've had them unco often, the day--" + +And he stooped down to the fire, and began to light his pipe, muttering to +himself-- + +"Saxty years o' madness! saxty years o' madness! How lang, O Lord, before +thou bring these puir daft bodies to their richt mind again?" + +We stood watching him, and interchanging looks--expecting something, we +knew not what. + +Suddenly he sank forward on his knees, with his hands on the bars of the +grate; we rushed forward, and caught him up. He turned his eyes up to me, +speechless, with a ghastly expression; one side of his face was all drawn +aside--and helpless as a child, he let us lift him to his bed, and there he +lay staring at the ceiling. + + * * * * * + +Four weary days passed by--it was the night of the ninth of April. In the +evening of that day his speech returned to him on a sudden--he seemed +uneasy about something, and several times asked Katie the day of the month. + +"Before the tenth--ay, we maun pray for that. I doubt but I'm ower hearty +yet--I canna bide to see the shame o' that day-- + + * * * * * + +"Na--I'll tak no potions nor pills--gin it were na for scruples o' +conscience, I'd apocartereeze a'thegither, after the manner o' the ancient +philosophers. But it's no' lawful, I misdoubt, to starve onesel." + +"Here is the doctor," said Katie. + +"Doctor? Wha ca'd for doctors? Canst thou administer to a mind diseased? +Can ye tak long nose, an' short nose, an' snub nose, an' seventeen Deuks +o' Wellington out o' my puddins? Will your castor oil, an' your calomel, +an' your croton, do that? D'ye ken a medicamentum that'll put brains into +workmen--? Non tribus Anti-cyrus! Tons o' hellebore--acres o' strait +waistcoats--a hall police-force o' head-doctors, winna do it. Juvat +insanire--this their way is their folly, as auld Benjamin o' Tudela +saith of the heathen. Heigho! 'Forty years lang was he grevit wi' this +generation, an' swore in his wrath that they suldna enter into his rest.' +Pulse? tongue? ay, shak your lugs, an' tak your fee, an' dinna keep auld +folk out o' their graves. Can ye sing?" + +The doctor meekly confessed his inability. + +"That's pity--or I'd gar ye sing Auld-lang-syne,-- + + "We twa hae paidlit in the burn-- + +"Aweel, aweel, aweel--" + + * * * * * + +Weary and solemn was that long night, as we sat there, with the crushing +weight of the morrow on our mind, watching by that death-bed, listening +hour after hour to the rambling soliloquies of the old man, as "he babbled +of green fields"; yet I verily believe that to all of us, especially to +poor little Katie, the active present interest of tending him kept us from +going all but mad with anxiety and excitement. But it was weary work:--and +yet, too, strangely interesting, as at times there came scraps of old +Scotch love-poetry, contrasting sadly with the grim withered lips that +uttered them--hints to me of some sorrow long since suffered, but never +healed. I had never heard him allude to such an event before but once, on +the first day of our acquaintance. + + "I went to the kirk, + My luve sat afore me; + I trow my twa een + Tauld him a sweet story. + + "Aye wakin o'-- + Wakin aye and weary-- + I thocht a' the kirk + Saw me and my deary. + +"'Aye wakin o'!'--Do ye think, noo, we sall ha' knowledge in the next warld +o' them we loved on earth? I askit that same o' Rab Burns ance; an' he +said, puir chiel, he 'didna ken ower well, we maun bide and see';--bide and +see--that's the gran' philosophy o' life, after a'. Aiblins folk'll ken +their true freens there; an' there'll be na mair luve coft and sauld for +siller-- + + "Gear and tocher is needit nane + I' the country whaur my luve is gane. + + * * * * * + +"Gin I had a true freen the noo! to gang down the wynd, an' find if it war +but an auld Abraham o' a blue-gown, wi' a bit crowd, or a fizzle-pipe, to +play me the Bush aboon Traquair! Na, na, na; it's singing the Lord's song +in a strange land, that wad be; an' I hope the application's no irreverent, +for ane that was rearit amang the hills o' God, an' the trees o' the forest +which he hath planted. + + "Oh the broom, and the bonny yellow broom, + The broom o' the Cowden-knowes. + +"Hech, but she wud lilt that bonnily! + + * * * * * + +"Did ye ever gang listering saumons by nicht? Ou, but it's braw sport, wi' +the scars an' the birks a' glowering out blude-red i' the torchlight, and +the bonnie hizzies skelping an' skirling on the bank-- + + * * * * * + +"There was a gran' leddy, a bonny leddy, came in and talked like an angel o' +God to puir auld Sandy, anent the salvation o' his soul. But I tauld her +no' to fash hersel. It's no my view o' human life, that a man's sent into +the warld just to save his soul, an' creep out again. An' I said I wad +leave the savin' o' my soul to Him that made my soul; it was in richt gude +keepin' there, I'd warrant. An' then she was unco fleyed when she found I +didna haud wi' the Athanasian creed. An' I tauld her, na; if He that died +on cross was sic a ane as she and I teuk him to be, there was na that pride +nor spite in him, be sure, to send a puir auld sinful, guideless body to +eternal fire, because he didna a'thegither understand the honour due to his +name." + +"Who was this lady?" + +He did not seem to know; and Katie had never heard of her before--"some +district visitor" or other. + + * * * * * + +"I sair misdoubt but the auld creeds are in the right anent Him, after a'. +I'd gie muckle to think it--there's na comfort as it is. Aiblins there +might be a wee comfort in that, for a poor auld worn-out patriot. But it's +ower late to change. I tauld her that, too, ance. It's ower late to put new +wine into auld bottles. I was unco drawn to the high doctrines ance, when +I was a bit laddie, an' sat in the wee kirk by my minnie an' my daddie--a +richt stern auld Cameronian sort o' body he was, too; but as I grew, and +grew, the bed was ower short for a man to stretch himsel thereon, an' the +plaidie ower strait for a man to fauld himself therein; and so I had to +gang my gate a' naked in the matter o' formulæ, as Maister Tummas has it." + +"Ah! do send for a priest, or a clergyman!" said Katie, who partly +understood his meaning. + +"Parson? He canna pit new skin on auld scars. Na bit stickit curate-laddie +for me, to gang argumentin' wi' ane that's auld enough to be his +gran'father. When the parsons will hear me anent God's people, then I'll +hear them anent God. + + "--Sae I'm wearing awa, Jean, + To the land o' the leal-- + +"Gin I ever get thither. Katie, here, hauds wi' purgatory, ye ken! where +souls are burnt clean again--like baccy pipes-- + + "When Bazor-brigg is ower and past, + Every night and alle; + To Whinny Muir thou comest at last, + And God receive thy sawle. + + "Gin hosen an' shoon thou gavest nane + Every night and alle; + The whins shall pike thee intil the bane, + And God receive thy sawle. + +"Amen. There's mair things aboon, as well as below, than are dreamt o' +in our philosophy. At least, where'er I go, I'll meet no long nose, nor +short nose, nor snub nose patriots there; nor puir gowks stealing the +deil's tools to do God's wark wi'. Out among the eternities an' the +realities--it's no that dreary outlook, after a', to find truth an' +fact--naught but truth an' fact--e'en beside the worm that dieth not, and +the fire that is not quenched!" + +"God forbid!" said Katie. + +"God do whatsoever shall please Him, Katie--an' that's aye gude like +Himsel'. Shall no the Judge of all the earth do right--right--right?" + +And murmuring that word of words to himself, over and over, more and more +faintly, he turned slowly over, and seemed to slumber-- + +Some half hour passed before we tried to stir him. He was dead. + +And the candles waned grey, and the great light streamed in through every +crack and cranny, and the sun had risen on the Tenth of April. What would +be done before the sun had set? + +What would be done? Just what we had the might to do; and therefore, +according to the formula on which we were about to act, that mights are +rights, just what we had a right to do--nothing. Futility, absurdity, +vanity, and vexation of spirit. I shall make my next a short chapter. It is +a day to be forgotten--and forgiven. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +THE TENTH OF APRIL. + + +And he was gone at last! Kind women, whom his unknown charities had saved +from shame, laid him out duly, and closed his eyes, and bound up that face +that never would beam again with genial humour, those lips that would +never again speak courage and counsel to the sinful, the oppressed, the +forgotten. And there he lay, the old warrior, dead upon his shield; worn +out by long years of manful toil in The People's Cause; and, saddest +thought of all, by disappointment in those for whom he spent his soul. +True, he was aged; no one knew how old. He had said, more than eighty +years; but we had shortened his life, and we knew it. He would never see +that deliverance for which he had been toiling ever since the days when as +a boy he had listened to Tooke and Cartwright, and the patriarchs of the +people's freedom. Bitter, bitter were our thoughts, and bitter were our +tears, as Crossthwaite and I stood watching that beloved face, now in death +refined to a grandeur, to a youthful simplicity and delicacy, which we had +never seen on it before--calm and strong--the square jaws set firm even +in death--the lower lip still clenched above the upper, as if in a divine +indignation and everlasting protest, even in the grave, against the +devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone--the old lion, worn out with many +wounds, dead in his cage. Where could we replace him? There were gallant +men amongst us, eloquent, well-read, earnest--men whose names will ring +through this land ere long--men who had boon taught wisdom, even as he, by +the sinfulness, the apathy, the ingratitude, as well as by the sufferings +of their fellows. But where should we two find again the learning, the +moderation, the long experience, above all the more than women's tenderness +of him whom we had lost? And at that time, too, of all others! Alas! we had +despised his counsel: wayward and fierce we would have none of his reproof; +and now God has withdrawn him from us; the righteous was taken away from +the evil to come. For we knew that evil was coming. We felt all along that +we should _not_ succeed. But we were desperate; and his death made us more +desperate; still at the moment it drew us nearer to each other. Yes--we +were rudderless upon a roaring sea, and all before us blank with lurid +blinding mist: but still we were together, to live and die; and as we +looked into each other's eyes, and clasped each other's hands above the +dead man's face, we felt that there was love between us, as of Jonathan and +David, passing the love of woman. + +Few words passed. Even our passionate artizan-nature, so sensitive +and voluble in general, in comparison with the cold reserve of the +field-labourer and the gentleman, was hushed in silent awe between the +thought of the past and the thought of the future. We felt ourselves +trembling between two worlds. We felt that to-morrow must decide our +destiny--and we felt rightly, though little we guessed what that destiny +would be! + +But it was time to go. We had to prepare for the meeting, We must be at +Kennington Common within three hours at furthest; and Crossthwaite hurried +away, leaving Katie and me to watch the dead. + +And then came across me the thought of another deathbed--my mother's--How +she had lain and lain, while I was far away--And then I wondered whether +she had suffered much, or faded away at last in a peaceful sleep, as he +had--And then I wondered how her corpse had looked; and pictured it to +myself, lying in the little old room day after day, till they screwed the +coffin down--before I came!--Cruel! Did she look as calm, as grand in death +as he who lay there? And as I watched the old man's features, I seemed +to trace in them the strangest likeness to my mother's. The strangest +likeness! I could not shake it off. It became intense--miraculous. Was it +she, or was it he, who lay there? I shook myself and rose. My loins ached, +my limbs were heavy; my brain and eyes swam round. I must be over fatigued +by excitement and sleeplessness. I would go down stairs into the fresh air, +and shake it off. + +As I came down the passage, a woman, dressed in black, was standing at the +door, speaking to one of the lodgers. "And he is dead! Oh, if I had but +known sooner that he was even ill!" + +That voice--that figure-surely, I knew them!--them, at least, there was +no mistaking! Or, was it another phantom of my disordered brain! I pushed +forward to the door, and as I did so, she turned and our eyes met full. It +was she--Lady Ellerton! sad, worn, transformed by widow's weeds, but that +face was like no other's still. Why did I drop my eyes and draw back at the +first glance like a guilty coward? She beckoned me towards her, went out +into the street, and herself began the conversation, from which I shrank, I +know not why. + +"When did he die?" + +"Just at sunrise this morning. But how came you here to visit him? Were you +the lady who, as he said, came to him a few days since?" + +She did not answer my question. "At sunrise this morning?--A fitting time +for him to die, before he sees the ruin and disgrace of those for whom he +laboured. And you, too, I hear, are taking your share in this projected +madness and iniquity?" + +"What right have you," I asked, bristling up at a sudden suspicion that +crossed me, "to use such words about me?" + +"Recollect," she answered, mildly but firmly, "your conduct, three years +ago, at D * * * *." + +"What," I said, "was it not proved upon my trial, that I exerted all my +powers, endangered my very life, to prevent outrage in that case?" + +"It was proved upon your trial," she replied, in a marked tone; "but we +were informed, and alas! from authority only too good, namely, from that of +an ear-witness, of the sanguinary and ferocious language which you were not +afraid to use at the meeting in London, only two nights before the riot." + +I turned white with rage and indignation. + +"Tell me," I said--"tell me, if you have any honour, who dared to forge +such an atrocious calumny! No! you need not tell me. I see well enough now. +He should have told you that I exposed myself that night to insult, not by +advocating, but by opposing violence, as I have always done--as I would +now, were not I desperate--hopeless of any other path to liberty. And as +for this coming struggle, have I not written to my cousin, humiliating as +it was to me, to beg him to warn you all from me, lest--" + +I could not finish the sentence. + +"You wrote? He has warned us, but he never mentioned your name. He spoke of +his knowledge as having been picked up by himself at personal risk to his +clerical character." + +"The risk, I presume, of being known to have actually received a letter +from a Chartist; but I wrote--on my honour I wrote--a week ago; and +received no word of answer!" + +"Is this true?" she asked. + +"A man is not likely to deal in useless falsehoods, who knows not whether +he shall live to see the set of sun!" + +"Then you are implicated in this expected insurrection?" + +"I am implicated," I answered, "with the people; what they do I shall do. +Those who once called themselves the patrons of the tailor-poet, left +the mistaken enthusiast to languish for three years in prison, without a +sign, a hint of mercy, pity, remembrance. Society has cast me off; and, +in casting me off, it has sent me off to my own people, where I should +have stayed from the beginning. Now I am at my post, because I am among my +class. If they triumph peacefully, I triumph with them. If they need blood +to gain their rights, be it so. Let the blood be upon the head of those who +refuse, not those who demand. At least, I shall be with my own people. And +if I die, what better thing on earth can happen to me?" + +"But the law?" she said. + +"Do not talk to me of law! I know it too well in practice to be moved by +any theories about it. Laws are no law, but tyranny, when the few make +them, in order to oppress the many by them." + +"Oh!" she said, in a voice of passionate earnestness, which I had never +heard from her before, "stop--for God's sake, stop! You know not what you +are saying--what you are doing. Oh! that I had met you before--that I +had had more time to speak to poor Mackaye! Oh! wait, wait--there is a +deliverance for you! but never in this path--never. And just while I, and +nobler far than I, are longing and struggling to find the means of telling +you your deliverance, you, in the madness of your haste, are making it +impossible!" + +There was a wild sincerity in her words--an almost imploring tenderness in +her tone. + +"So young!" said she; "so young to be lost thus!" + +I was intensely moved. I felt, I knew, that she had a message for me. I +felt that hers was the only intellect in the world to which I would have +submitted mine; and, for one moment, all the angel and all the devil in me +wrestled for the mastery. If I could but have trusted her one moment.... +No! all the pride, the spite, the suspicion, the prejudice of years, rolled +back upon me. "An aristocrat! and she, too, the one who has kept me from +Lillian!" And in my bitterness, not daring to speak the real thought within +me, I answered with a flippant sneer-- + +"Yes, madam! like Cordelia, so young, yet so untender!--Thanks to the +mercies of the upper classes!" + +Did she turn away in indignation? No, by Heaven! there was nothing upon her +face but the intensest yearning pity. If she had spoken again she would +have conquered; but before those perfect lips could open, the thought of +thoughts flashed across me. + +"Tell me one thing! Is my cousin George to be married to ----" and I +stopped. + +"He is." + +"And yet," I said, "you wish to turn me back from dying on a barricade!" +And without waiting for a reply, I hurried down the street in all the fury +of despair. + + * * * * * + +I have promised to say little about the Tenth of April, for indeed I have +no heart to do so. Every one of Mackaye's predictions came true. We had +arrayed against us, by our own folly, the very physical force to which we +had appealed. The dread of general plunder and outrage by the savages of +London, the national hatred of that French and Irish interference of which +we had boasted, armed against us thousands of special constables, who had +in the abstract little or no objection to our political opinions. The +practical common sense of England, whatever discontent it might feel with +the existing system, refused to let it be hurled rudely down, on the mere +chance of building up on its ruins something as yet untried, and even +undefined. Above all, the people would not rise. Whatever sympathy they had +with us, they did not care to show it. And then futility after futility +exposed itself. The meeting which was to have been counted by hundreds of +thousands, numbered hardly its tens of thousands; and of them a frightful +proportion were of those very rascal classes, against whom we ourselves had +offered to be sworn in as special constables. O'Connor's courage failed him +after all. He contrived to be called away, at the critical moment, by some +problematical superintendent of police. Poor Cuffy, the honestest, if not +the wisest, speaker there, leapt off the waggon, exclaiming that we were +all "humbugged and betrayed"; and the meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, +drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain on its way home--for +the very heavens mercifully helped to quench our folly--while the +monster-petition crawled ludicrously away in a hack cab, to be dragged to +the floor of the House of Commons amid roars of laughter--"inextinguishable +laughter," as of Tennyson's Epicurean Gods-- + + Careless of mankind. + For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled + Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled + Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world. + There they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, + Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, + Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, _and praying hands. + But they smile, they find a music, centred in a doleful song, + Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong, + Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong_ + Chanted by an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, + Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil, + Storing little yearly dues of wheat, and wine, and oil; + Till they perish, and they suffer--some, 'tis whispered, down in hell + Suffer endless anguish!-- + +Truly--truly, great poets' words are vaster than the singers themselves +suppose! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +THE LOWEST DEEP. + + +Sullen, disappointed, desperate, I strode along the streets that evening, +careless whither I went. The People's Cause was lost--the Charter a +laughing-stock. That the party which monopolizes wealth, rank, and, as it +is fancied, education and intelligence, should have been driven, degraded, +to appeal to brute force for self-defence--that thought gave me a savage +joy; but that it should have conquered by that last, lowest resource!--That +the few should be still stronger than the many, or the many still too +cold-hearted and coward to face the few--that sickened me. I hated the +well-born young special constables whom I passed, because they would have +fought. I hated the gent and shop-keeper special constables, because they +would have run away. I hated my own party, because they had gone too +far--because they had not gone far enough. I hated myself, because I had +not produced some marvellous effect--though what that was to have been I +could not tell--and hated myself all the more for that ignorance. + +A group of effeminate shop-keepers passed me, shouting, "God save the +Queen!" "Hypocrites!" I cried in my heart--"they mean 'God save our shops!' +Liars! They keep up willingly the useful calumny, that their slaves and +victims are disloyal as well as miserable!" + +I was utterly abased--no, not utterly; for my self-contempt still vented +itself--not in forgiveness, but in universal hatred and defiance. Suddenly +I perceived my cousin, laughing and jesting with a party of fashionable +young specials: I shrank from him; and yet, I know not why, drew as near +him as I could, unobserved--near enough to catch the words. + +"Upon my honour, Locke, I believe you are a Chartist yourself at heart." + +"At least I am no Communist," said he, in a significant tone. "There is one +little bit of real property which I have no intention of sharing with my +neighbours." + +"What, the little beauty somewhere near Cavendish Square?" + +"That's my business." + +"Whereby you mean that you are on your way to her now? Well, I am invited +to the wedding, remember." + +He pushed on laughingly, without answering. I followed him fast--"near +Cavendish Square!"--the very part of the town where Lillian lived! I had +had, as yet, a horror of going near it; but now an intolerable suspicion +scourged me forward, and I dogged his steps, hiding behind pillars, and at +the corners of streets, and then running on, till I got sight of him again. +He went through Cavendish Square, up Harley Street--was it possible? I +gnashed my teeth at the thought. But it must be so. He stopped at the +dean's house, knocked, and entered without parley. + +In a minute I was breathless on the door-step, and knocked. I had no plan, +no object, except the wild wish to see my own despair. I never thought +of the chances of being recognized by the servants, or of anything else, +except of Lillian by my cousin's side. + +The footman came out smiling, "What did I want?" + +"I--I--Mr. Locke." + +"Well you needn't be in such a hurry!" (with a significant grin). "Mr. +Locke's likely to be busy for a few minutes yet, I expect." + +Evidently the man did not know me. + +"Tell him that--that a person wishes to speak to him on particular +business." Though I had no more notion what that business was than the man +himself. + +"Sit down in the hall." + +And I heard the fellow, a moment afterwards, gossiping and laughing with +the maids below about the "young couple." + +To sit down was impossible; my only thought was--where was Lillian? + +Voices in an adjoining room caught my ear. His! yes--and hers too--soft +and low. What devil prompted me to turn eavesdropper? to run headlong +into temptation? I was close to the dining-room door, but they were not +there--evidently they were in the back room, which, as I knew, opened into +it with folding-doors. I--I must confess all.--Noiselessly, with craft like +a madman's, I turned the handle, slipped in as stealthily as a cat--the +folding-doors were slightly open. I had a view of all that passed within. +A horrible fascination seemed to keep my eyes fixed on them, in spite of +myself. Honour, shame, despair, bade me turn away, but in vain. + +I saw them.--How can I write it? Yet I will.--I saw them sitting together +on the sofa. Their arms were round each other. Her head lay upon his +breast; he bent over her with an intense gaze, as of a basilisk, I thought; +how do I know that it was not the fierceness of his love? Who could have +helped loving her? + +Suddenly she raised her head, and looked up in his face--her eyes brimming +with tenderness, her cheeks burning with mingled delight and modesty--their +lips met, and clung together.... It seemed a life--an eternity--before they +parted again. Then the spell was broken, and I rushed from the room. + +Faint, giddy, and blind, I just recollect leaning against the wall of the +staircase. He came hastily out, and started as he saw me. My face told all. + +"What? Eavesdropping?" he said, in a tone of unutterable scorn. I answered +nothing, but looked stupidly and fixedly in his face, while he glared at me +with that keen, burning, intolerable eye. I longed to spring at his throat, +but that eye held me as the snake's holds the deer. At last I found words. + +"Traitor! everywhere--in everything--tricking me--supplanting me--in my +friends--in my love!" + +"Your love? Yours?" And the fixed eye still glared upon me. "Listen, cousin +Alton! The strong and the weak have been matched for the same prize: and +what wonder, if the strong man conquers? Go and ask Lillian how she likes +the thought of being a Communist's love!" + +As when, in a nightmare, we try by a desperate effort to break the spell, I +sprang forward, and struck at him, he put my hand by carelessly, and felled +me bleeding to the ground. I recollect hardly anything more, till I found +myself thrust into the street by sneering footmen, and heard them call +after me "Chartist" and "Communist" as I rushed along the pavement, +careless where I went. + +I strode and staggered on through street after street, running blindly +against passengers, dashing under horses' heads, heedless of warnings and +execrations, till I found myself, I know not how, on Waterloo Bridge. I had +meant to go there when I left the door. I knew that at least--and now I was +there. + +I buried myself in a recess of the bridge, and stared around and up and +down. + +I was alone--deserted even by myself. Mother, sister, friends, love, the +idol of my life, were all gone. I could have borne that. But to be shamed, +and know that I deserved it; to be deserted by my own honour, self-respect, +strength of will--who can bear that? + +I could have borne it, had one thing been left--faith in my own +destiny--the inner hope that God had called me to do a work for him. + +"What drives the Frenchman to suicide?" I asked myself, arguing ever even +in the face of death and hell--"His faith in nothing but his own lusts and +pleasures; and when they are gone, then comes the pan of charcoal--and all +is over. What drives the German? His faith in nothing but his own brain. He +has fallen down and worshipped that miserable 'Ich' of his, and made that, +and not God's will, the centre and root of his philosophy, his poetry, and +his self-idolizing æsthetics; and when it fails him, then for prussic acid, +and nonentity. Those old Romans, too--why, they are the very experimentum +crucis of suicide! As long as they fancied that they had a calling to serve +the state, they could live on and suffer. But when they found no more work +left for them, then they could die--as Porcia died--as Cato--as I ought. +What is there left for me to do? outcast, disgraced, useless, decrepit--" + +I looked out over the bridge into the desolate night. Below me the dark +moaning river-eddies hurried downward. The wild west-wind howled past me, +and leapt over the parapet downward. The huge reflexion of Saint Paul's, +the great tap-roots of light from lamp and window that shone upon the lurid +stream, pointed down--down--down. A black wherry shot through the arch +beneath me, still and smoothly downward. My brain began to whirl madly--I +sprang upon the step.--A man rushed past me, clambered on the parapet, and +threw up his arms wildly.--A moment more, and he would have leapt into the +stream. The sight recalled me to my senses--say, rather, it reawoke in me +the spirit of manhood. I seized him by the arm, tore him down upon the +pavement, and held him, in spite of his frantic struggles. It was Jemmy +Downes! Gaunt, ragged, sodden, blear-eyed, drivelling, the worn-out +gin-drinker stood, his momentary paroxysm of strength gone, trembling and +staggering. + +"Why won't you let a cove die? Why won't you let a cove die? They're all +dead--drunk, and poisoned, and dead! What is there left?"--he burst out +suddenly in his old ranting style--"what is there left on earth to live +for? The prayers of liberty are answered by the laughter of tyrants; her +sun is sunk beneath the ocean wave, and her pipe put out by the raging +billows of aristocracy! Those starving millions of Kennington Common--where +are they? Where? I axes you," he cried fiercely, raising his voice to a +womanish scream--"where are they?" + +"Gone home to bed, like sensible people; and you had better go too." + +"Bed! I sold ours a month ago; but we'll go. Come along, and I'll show you +my wife and family; and we'll have a tea-party--Jacob's Island tea. Come +along! + + "Flea, flea, unfortunate flea! + Bereft of his wife and his small family!" + +He clutched my arm, and dragging me off towards the Surrey side, turned +down Stamford Street. + +I followed half perforce; and the man seemed quite demented--whether with +gin or sorrow I could not tell. As he strode along the pavement, he kept +continually looking back, with a perplexed terrified air, as if expecting +some fearful object. + +"The rats!--the rats! don't you see 'em coming out of the gullyholes, +atween the area railings--dozens and dozens?" + +"No; I saw none." + +"You lie; I hear their tails whisking; there's their shiny hats a +glistening, and every one on 'em with peelers' staves! Quick! quick! or +they'll have me to the station-house." + +"Nonsense!" I said; "we are free men! What are the policemen to us?" + +"You lie!" cried he, with a fearful oath, and a wrench at my arm which +almost threw me down. "Do you call a sweater's man a free man?" + +"You a sweater's man?" + +"Ay!" with another oath. "My men ran away--folks said I drank, too; but +here I am; and I, that sweated others, I'm sweated myself--and I'm a slave! +I'm a slave--a negro slave, I am, you aristocrat villain!" + +"Mind me, Downes; if you will go quietly, I will go with you; but if you do +not let go of my arm, I give you in charge to the first policeman I meet." + +"Oh, don't, don't!" whined the miserable wretch, as he almost fell on +his knees, gin-drinkers' tears running down his face, "or I shall be too +late.--And then, the rats'll get in at the roof, and up through the floor, +and eat 'em all up, and my work too--the grand new three-pound coat that +I've been stitching at this ten days, for the sum of one half-crown +sterling--and don't I wish I may see the money? Come on, quick; there +are the rats, close behind!" And he dashed across the broad roaring +thoroughfare of Bridge Street, and hurrying almost at a run down Tooley +Street, plunged into the wilderness of Bermondsey. + +He stopped at the end of a miserable blind alley, where a dirty gas-lamp +just served to make darkness visible, and show the patched windows and +rickety doorways of the crazy houses, whose upper stories were lost in a +brooding cloud of fog; and the pools of stagnant water at our feet; and the +huge heap of cinders which filled up the waste end of the alley--a dreary, +black, formless mound, on which two or three spectral dogs prowled up and +down after the offal, appearing and vanishing like dark imps in and out of +the black misty chaos beyond. + +The neighbourhood was undergoing, as it seemed, "improvements" of that +peculiar metropolitan species which consists in pulling down the dwellings +of the poor, and building up rich men's houses instead; and great +buildings, within high temporary palings, had already eaten up half the +little houses; as the great fish, and the great estates, and the great +shopkeepers, eat up the little ones of their species--by the law of +competition, lately discovered to be the true creator and preserver of the +universe. There they loomed up, the tall bullies, against the dreary sky, +looking down, with their grim, proud, stony visages, on the misery which +they were driving out of one corner, only to accumulate and intensify it in +another. + +The house at which we stopped was the last in the row; all its companions +had been pulled down; and there it stood, leaning out with one naked ugly +side into the gap, and stretching out long props, like feeble arms and +crutches, to resist the work of demolition. + +A group of slatternly people were in the entry, talking loudly, and as +Downes pushed by them, a woman seized him by the arm. + +"Oh! you unnatural villain!--To go away after your drink, and leave all +them poor dear dead corpses locked up, without even letting a body go in to +stretch them out!" + +"And breeding the fever, too, to poison the whole house!" growled one. + +"The relieving officer's been here, my cove," said another, "and he's gone +for a peeler and a search warrant to break open the door, I can tell you!" + +But Downes pushed past unheeding, unlocked a door at the end of the +passage, thrust me in, locked it again, and then rushed across the room in +chase of two or three rats, who vanished into cracks and holes. + +And what a room! A low lean-to with wooden walls, without a single article +of furniture; and through the broad chinks of the floor shone up as it +were ugly glaring eyes, staring at us. They were the reflexions of the +rushlight in the sewer below. The stench was frightful--the air heavy with +pestilence. The first breath I drew made my heart sink, and my stomach +turn. But I forgot everything in the object which lay before me, as Downes +tore a half-finished coat off three corpses laid side by side on the bare +floor. + +There was his little Irish wife:--dead--and naked; the wasted white limbs +gleamed in the lurid light; the unclosed eyes stared, as if reproachfully, +at the husband whose drunkenness had brought her there to kill her with +the pestilence; and on each side of her a little, shrivelled, impish, +child-corpse,--the wretched man had laid their arms round the dead mother's +neck--and there they slept, their hungering and wailing over at last for +ever; the rats had been busy already with them--but what matter to them +now? + +"Look!" he cried; "I watched 'em dying! Day after day I saw the devils come +up through the cracks, like little maggots and beetles, and all manner of +ugly things, creeping down their throats; and I asked 'em, and they said +they were the fever devils." + +It was too true; the poisonous exhalations had killed them. The wretched +man's delirium tremens had given that horrible substantiality to the +poisonous fever gases. + +Suddenly Downes turned on me, almost menacingly. "Money! money! I want some +gin!" + +I was thoroughly terrified--and there was no shame in feeling fear, locked +up with a madman far my superior in size and strength, in so ghastly a +place. But the shame and the folly too, would have been in giving way to my +fear; and with a boldness half assumed, half the real fruit of excitement +and indignation at the horrors I beheld, I answered-- + +"If I had money, I would give you none. What do you want with gin? Look +at the fruits of your accursed tippling. If you had taken my advice, +my poor fellow," I went on, gaining courage as I spoke, "and become a +water-drinker, like me--" + +"Curse you and your water-drinking! If you had had no water to drink +or wash with for two years but that--that," pointing to the foul ditch +below--"if you had emptied the slops in there with one hand, and filled +your kettle with the other--" + +"Do you actually mean that that sewer is your only drinking water?" + +"Where else can we get any? Everybody drinks it; and you shall, too--you +shall!" he cried, with a fearful oath, "and then see if you don't run off +to the gin-shop, to take the taste of it out of your mouth. Drink? and who +can help drinking, with his stomach turned with such hell-broth as that--or +such a hell's blast as this air is here, ready to vomit from morning till +night with the smells? I'll show you. You shall drink a bucket full of it, +as sure as you live, you shall." + +And he ran out of the back door, upon a little balcony, which hung over the +ditch. + +I tried the door, but the key was gone, and the handle too. I beat +furiously on it, and called for help. Two gruff authoritative voices were +heard in the passage. + +"Let us in; I'm the policeman!" + +"Let me out, or mischief will happen!" + +The policeman made a vigorous thrust at the crazy door; and just as it +burst open, and the light of his lantern streamed into the horrible den, a +heavy splash was heard outside. + +"He has fallen into the ditch!" + +"He'll be drowned, then, as sure as he's a born man," shouted one of the +crowd behind. + +We rushed out on the balcony. The light of the policeman's lantern glared +over the ghastly scene--along the double row of miserable house-backs, +which lined the sides of the open tidal ditch--over strange rambling +jetties, and balconies, and sleeping-sheds, which hung on rotting piles +over the black waters, with phosphorescent scraps of rotten fish gleaming +and twinkling out of the dark hollows, like devilish grave-lights--over +bubbles of poisonous gas, and bloated carcases of dogs, and lumps of offal, +floating on the stagnant olive-green hell-broth--over the slow sullen rows +of oily ripple which were dying away into the darkness far beyond, sending +up, as they stirred, hot breaths of miasma--the only sign that a spark of +humanity, after years of foul life, had quenched itself at last in that +foul death. I almost fancied that I could see the haggard face staring up +at me through the slimy water; but no, it was as opaque as stone. + +I shuddered and went in again, to see slatternly gin-smelling women +stripping off their clothes--true women even there--to cover the poor naked +corpses; and pointing to the bruises which told a tale of long tyranny +and cruelty; and mingling their lamentations with stories of shrieks and +beating, and children locked up for hours to starve; and the men looked on +sullenly, as if they too were guilty, or rushed out to relieve themselves +by helping to find the drowned body. Ugh! it was the very mouth of hell, +that room. And in the midst of all the rout, the relieving officer stood +impassive, jotting down scraps of information, and warning us to appear the +next day, to state what we knew before the magistrates. Needless hypocrisy +of law! Too careless to save the woman and children from brutal tyranny, +nakedness, starvation!--Too superstitious to offend its idol of vested +interests, by protecting the poor man against his tyrants, the house-owning +shopkeepers under whose greed the dwellings of the poor become nests of +filth and pestilence, drunkenness and degradation. Careless, superstitious, +imbecile law!--leaving the victims to die unhelped, and then, when the +fever and the tyranny has done its work, in thy sanctimonious prudishness, +drugging thy respectable conscience by a "searching inquiry" as to how it +all happened--lest, forsooth, there should have been "foul play!" Is the +knife or the bludgeon, then, the only foul play, and not the cesspool and +the curse of Rabshakeh? Go through Bermondsey or Spitalfields, St. Giles's +or Lambeth, and see if _there_ is not foul play enough already--to be tried +hereafter at a more awful coroner's inquest than thou thinkest of! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +DREAMLAND. + + +It must have been two o'clock in the morning before I reached my lodgings. +Too much exhausted to think, I hurried to my bed. I remember now that I +reeled strangely as I went up-stairs. I lay down, and was asleep in an +instant. + +How long I had slept I know not, when I awoke with a strange confusion and +whirling in my brain, and an intolerable weight and pain about my back and +loins. By the light of the gas-lamp I saw a figure standing at the foot of +my bed. I could not discern the face, but I knew instinctively that it was +my mother. I called to her again and again, but she did not answer. She +moved slowly away, and passed out through the wall of the room. + +I tried to follow her, but could not. An enormous, unutterable weight +seemed to lie upon me. The bedclothes grew and grew before me, and upon +me, into a vast mountain, millions of miles in height. Then it seemed all +glowing red, like the cone of a volcano. I heard the roaring of the fires +within, the rattling of the cinders down the heaving slope. A river ran +from its summit; and up that river-bed it seemed I was doomed to climb +and climb for ever, millions and millions of miles upwards, against the +rushing stream. The thought was intolerable, and I shrieked aloud. A raging +thirst had seized me. I tried to drink the river-water: but it was boiling +hot--sulphurous--reeking of putrefaction. Suddenly I fancied that I could +pass round the foot of the mountain; and jumbling, as madmen will, the +sublime and the ridiculous, I sprang up to go round the foot of my bed, +which was the mountain. + +I recollect lying on the floor. I recollect the people of the house, who +had been awoke by my shriek and my fall, rushing in and calling to me. I +could not rise or answer. I recollect a doctor; and talk about brain fever +and delirium. It was true. I was in a raging fever. And my fancy, long +pent-up and crushed by circumstances, burst out in uncontrollable wildness, +and swept my other faculties with it helpless away over all heaven and +earth, presenting to me, as in a vast kaleidoscope, fantastic symbols of +all I had ever thought, or read, or felt. + +That fancy of the mountain returned; but I had climbed it now. I was +wandering along the lower ridge of the Himalaya. On my right the line of +snow peaks showed like a rosy saw against the clear blue morning sky. +Raspberries and cyclamens were peeping through the snow around me. As I +looked down the abysses, I could see far below, through the thin veils of +blue mist that wandered in the glens, the silver spires of giant deodars, +and huge rhododendrons glowing like trees of flame. The longing of my +life to behold that cradle of mankind was satisfied. My eyes revelled in +vastness, as they swept over the broad flat jungle at the mountain foot, +a desolate sheet of dark gigantic grasses, furrowed with the paths of the +buffalo and rhinoceros, with barren sandy water-courses, desolate pools, +and here and there a single tree, stunted with malaria, shattered by +mountain floods; and far beyond, the vast plains of Hindostan, enlaced with +myriad silver rivers and canals, tanks and rice-fields, cities with their +mosques and minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the +boundless horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow +sandstone. I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous +shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, +struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose +and tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres +round my head; and Kali dropped the skull from her gore-dripping jaws, to +clutch me for her prey. Then my mother came, and seizing the pillars of the +portico, bent them like reeds: an earthquake shook the hills--great sheets +of woodland slid roaring and crashing into the valleys--a tornado swept +through the temple halls, which rocked and tossed like a vessel in a storm: +a crash--a cloud of yellow dust which filled the air--choked me--blinded +me--buried me-- + + * * * * * + +And Eleanor came by, and took my soul in the palm of her hand, as the +angels did Faust's, and carried it to a cavern by the seaside, and dropped +it in; and I fell and fell for ages. And all the velvet mosses, rock +flowers, and sparkling spars and ores, fell with me, round me, in showers +of diamonds, whirlwinds of emerald and ruby, and pattered into the sea that +moaned below, and were quenched; and the light lessened above me to one +small spark, and vanished; and I was in darkness, and turned again to my +dust. + + * * * * * + +And I was at the lowest point of created life; a madrepore rooted to the +rock, fathoms below the tide-mark; and worst of all, my individuality was +gone. I was not one thing, but many things--a crowd of innumerable polypi; +and I grew and grew, and the more I grew the more I divided, and multiplied +thousand and ten thousandfold. If I could have thought, I should have gone +mad at it; but I could only feel. + +And I heard Eleanor and Lillian talking, as they floated past me through +the deep, for they were two angels; and Lillian said, "When will he be one +again?" + +And Eleanor said, "He who falls from the golden ladder must climb through +ages to its top. He who tears himself in pieces by his lusts, ages only can +make him one again. The madrepore shall become a shell, and the shell a +fish, and the fish a bird, and the bird a beast; and then he shall become a +man again, and see the glory of the latter days." + + * * * * * + +And I was a soft crab, under a stone on the sea-shore. With infinite +starvation, and struggling, and kicking, I had got rid of my armour, shield +by shield, and joint by joint, and cowered, naked and pitiable, in the +dark, among dead shells and ooze. Suddenly the stone was turned up; and +there was my cousin's hated face laughing at me, and pointing me out +to Lillian. She laughed too, as I looked up, sneaking, ashamed, and +defenceless, and squared up at him with my soft useless claws. Why should +she not laugh? Are not crabs, and toads, and monkeys, and a hundred other +strange forms of animal life, jests of nature--embodiments of a divine +humour, at which men are meant to laugh and be merry? But, alas! my cousin, +as he turned away, thrust the stone back with his foot, and squelched me +flat. + + * * * * * + +And I was a remora, weak and helpless, till I could attach myself to some +living thing; and then I had power to stop the largest ship. And Lillian +was a flying fish, and skimmed over the crests of the waves on gauzy wings. +And my cousin was a huge shark, rushing after her, greedy and open-mouthed; +and I saw her danger, and clung to him, and held him back; and just as I +had stopped him, she turned and swam back into his open jaws. + + * * * * * + +Sand--sand--nothing but sand! The air was full of sand drifting over +granite temples, and painted kings and triumphs, and the skulls of a former +world; and I was an ostrich, flying madly before the simoon wind, and the +giant sand pillars, which stalked across the plains, hunting me down. And +Lillian was an Amazon queen, beautiful, and cold, and cruel; and she rode +upon a charmed horse, and carried behind her on her saddle a spotted ounce, +which, was my cousin; and, when I came near her, she made him leap down +and course me. And we ran for miles and for days through the interminable +sand, till he sprung on me, and dragged me down. And as I lay quivering +and dying, she reined in her horse above me, and looked down at me with +beautiful, pitiless eyes; and a wild Arab tore the plumes from my wings, +and she took them and wreathed them in her golden hair. The broad and +blood-red sun sank down beneath the sand, and the horse and the Amazon and +the ostrich plumes shone blood-red in his lurid rays. + + * * * * * + +I was a mylodon among South American forests--a vast sleepy mass, my +elephantine limbs and yard-long talons contrasting strangely with the +little meek rabbit's head, furnished with a poor dozen of clumsy grinders, +and a very small kernel of brains, whose highest consciousness was the +enjoyment of muscular strength. Where I had picked up the sensation which +my dreams realized for me, I know not: my waking life, alas! had never +given me experience of it. Has the mind power of creating sensations for +itself? Surely it does so, in those delicious dreams about flying which +haunt us poor wingless mortals, which would seem to give my namesake's +philosophy the lie. However that may be, intense and new was the animal +delight, to plant my hinder claws at some tree-foot deep into the black +rotting vegetable-mould which steamed rich gases up wherever it was +pierced, and clasp my huge arms round the stem of some palm or tree-fern; +and then slowly bring my enormous weight and muscle to bear upon it, till +the stem bent like a withe, and the laced bark cracked, and the fibres +groaned and shrieked, and the roots sprung up out of the soil; and then, +with a slow circular wrench, the whole tree was twisted bodily out of the +ground, and the maddening tension of my muscles suddenly relaxed, and I +sank sleepily down upon the turf, to browse upon the crisp tart foliage, +and fall asleep in the glare of sunshine which streamed through the new +gap in the green forest roof. Much as I had envied the strong, I had never +before suspected the delight of mere physical exertion. I now understood +the wild gambols of the dog, and the madness which makes the horse gallop +and strain onwards till he drops and dies. They fulfil their nature, as I +was doing, and in that is always happiness. + +But I did more--whether from mere animal destructiveness, or from the +spark of humanity which was slowly rekindling in me, I began to delight in +tearing up trees for its own sake. I tried my strength daily on thicker and +thicker boles. I crawled up to the high palm-tops, and bowed them down by +my weight. My path through the forest was marked, like that of a tornado, +by snapped and prostrate stems and withering branches. Had I been a few +degrees more human, I might have expected a retribution for my sin. I had +fractured my own skull three or four times already. I used often to pass +the carcases of my race, killed, as geologists now find them, by the fall +of the trees they had overthrown; but still I went on, more and more +reckless, a slave, like many a so-called man, to the mere sense of power. + +One day I wandered to the margin of the woods, and climbing a tree, +surveyed a prospect new to me. For miles and miles, away to the white +line of the smoking Cordillera, stretched a low rolling plain; one vast +thistle-bed, the down of which flew in grey gauzy clouds before a soft +fitful breeze; innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it, and bent +the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose above the level +thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down. The +forest leaves seemed tasteless; my stomach sickened at them; nothing but +that tree would satisfy me; and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with +half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried even my bulk. + +At last, after days of painful crawling, I dragged my unwieldiness to the +tree-foot. Around it the plain was bare, and scored by burrows and heaps +of earth, among which gold, some in dust, some in great knots and ingots, +sparkled everywhere in the sun, in fearful contrast to the skulls and bones +which lay bleaching round. Some were human, some were those of vast and +monstrous beasts. I knew (one knows everything in dreams) that they had +been slain by the winged ants, as large as panthers, who snuffed and +watched around over the magic treasure. Of them I felt no fear; and they +seemed not to perceive me, as I crawled, with greedy, hunger-sharpened +eyes, up to the foot of the tree. It seemed miles in height. Its stem was +bare and polished like a palm's, and above a vast feathery crown of dark +green velvet slept in the still sunlight. But wonders of wonders! from +among the branches hung great sea-green lilies, and, nestled in the heart +of each of them, the bust of a beautiful girl. Their white bosoms and +shoulders gleamed rosy-white against the emerald petals, like conch-shells +half-hidden among sea-weeds, while their delicate waists melted +mysteriously into the central sanctuary of the flower. Their long arms +and golden tresses waved languishingly downward in the breeze; their eyes +glittered like diamonds; their breaths perfumed the air. A blind ecstasy +seized me--I awoke again to humanity, and fiercely clasping the tree, +shook and tore at it, in the blind hope of bringing nearer to me the magic +beauties above: for I knew that I was in the famous land of Wak-Wak, from +which the Eastern merchants used to pluck those flower-born beauties, and +bring them home to fill the harems of the Indian kings. Suddenly I heard +a rustling in the thistles behind me, and looking round saw again that +dreaded face--my cousin! + +He was dressed--strange jumble that dreams are!--like an American +backwoodsman. He carried the same revolver and bowie-knife which he had +showed me the fatal night that he intruded on the Chartist club. I shook +with terror; but he, too, did not see me. He threw himself on his knees, +and began fiercely digging and scraping for the gold. + +The winged ants rushed on him, but he looked up, and "held them with his +glittering eye," and they shrank back abashed into the thistle covert; +while I strained and tugged on, and the faces of the dryads above grew +sadder and older, and their tears fell on me like a fragrant rain. + +Suddenly the tree-bole cracked--it was tottering. I looked round, and saw +that my cousin knelt directly in the path of its fall. I tried to call +to him to move; but how could a poor edentate like myself articulate a +word? I tried to catch his attention by signs--he would not see. I tried, +convulsively, to hold the tree up, but it was too late; a sudden gust of +air swept by, and down it rushed, with a roar like a whirlwind, and leaving +my cousin untouched, struck me full across the loins, broke my backbone, +and pinned me to the ground in mortal agony. I heard one wild shriek rise +from the flower fairies, as they fell each from the lily cup, no longer of +full human size, but withered, shrivelled, diminished a thousand-fold, and +lay on the bare sand, like little rosy humming-birds' eggs, all crushed and +dead. + +The great blue heaven above me spoke, and cried, "Selfish and sense-bound! +thou hast murdered beauty!" + +The sighing thistle-ocean answered, and murmured, "Discontented! thou hast +murdered beauty!" + +One flower fairy alone lifted up her tiny cheek from the gold-strewn sand, +and cried, "Presumptuous! thou hast murdered beauty!" + +It was Lillian's face--Lillian's voice! My cousin heard it too, and turned +eagerly; and as my eyes closed in the last death-shiver, I saw him coolly +pick up the little beautiful figure, which looked like a fragment of some +exquisite cameo, and deliberately put it away in his cigar-case, as he said +to himself, "A charming tit-bit for me, when I return from the diggings"! + + * * * * * + +When I awoke again, I was a baby-ape in Bornean forests, perched among +fragrant trailers and fantastic orchis flowers; and as I looked down, +beneath the green roof, into the clear waters paved with unknown +water-lilies on which the sun had never shone, I saw my face reflected +in the pool--a melancholy, thoughtful countenance, with large projecting +brow--it might have been a negro child's. And I felt stirring in me, germs +of a new and higher consciousness--yearnings of love towards the mother +ape, who fed me and carried me from tree to tree. But I grew and grew; and +then the weight of my destiny fell upon me. I saw year by year my brow +recede, my neck enlarge, my jaw protrude; my teeth became tusks; skinny +wattles grew from my cheeks--the animal faculties in me were swallowing +up the intellectual. I watched in myself, with stupid self-disgust, the +fearful degradation which goes on from youth to age in all the monkey +race, especially in those which approach nearest to the human form. Long +melancholy mopings, fruitless stragglings to think, were periodically +succeeded by wild frenzies, agonies of lust and aimless ferocity. I flew +upon my brother apes, and was driven off with wounds. I rushed howling down +into the village gardens, destroying everything I met. I caught the birds +and insects, and tore them to pieces with savage glee. One day, as I sat +among the boughs, I saw Lillian coming along a flowery path--decked as Eve +might have been, the day she turned from Paradise. The skins of gorgeous +birds were round her waist; her hair was wreathed with fragrant tropic +flowers. On her bosom lay a baby--it was my cousin's. I knew her, and +hated her. The madness came upon me. I longed to leap from the bough and +tear her limb from limb; but brutal terror, the dread of man which is the +doom of beasts, kept me rooted to my place. Then my cousin came--a hunter +missionary; and I heard him talk to her with pride of the new world of +civilization and Christianity which he was organizing in that tropic +wilderness. I listened with a dim jealous understanding--not of the words, +but of the facts. I saw them instinctively, as in a dream. She pointed up +to me in terror and disgust, as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead. He +threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly, and fired--I fell dead, but +conscious still. I knew that my carcase was carried to the settlement; and +I watched while a smirking, chuckling surgeon dissected me, bone by bone, +and nerve by nerve. And as he was fingering at my heart, and discoursing +sneeringly about Van Helmont's dreams of the Archæus, and the animal +spirit which dwells within the solar plexus, Eleanor glided by again, like +an angel, and drew my soul out of the knot of nerves, with one velvet +finger-tip. + + * * * * * + +Child-dreams--more vague and fragmentary than my animal ones; and yet more +calm, and simple, and gradually, as they led me onward through a new life, +ripening into detail, coherence, and reflection. Dreams of a hut among +the valleys of Thibet--the young of forest animals, wild cats, and dogs, +and fowls, brought home to be my playmates, and grow up tame around me. +Snow-peaks which glittered white against the nightly sky, barring in the +horizon of the narrow valley, and yet seeming to beckon upwards, outwards. +Strange unspoken aspirations; instincts which pointed to unfulfilled +powers, a mighty destiny. A sense, awful and yet cheering, of a wonder +and a majesty, a presence and a voice around, in the cliffs and the pine +forests, and the great blue rainless heaven. The music of loving voices, +the sacred names of child and father, mother, brother, sister, first of all +inspirations.--Had we not an All-Father, whose eyes looked down upon us +from among those stars above; whose hand upheld the mountain roots below +us? Did He not love us, too, even as we loved each other? + + * * * * * + +The noise of wheels crushing slowly through meadows of tall marigolds and +asters, orchises and fragrant lilies. I lay, a child, upon a woman's bosom. +Was she my mother, or Eleanor, or Lillian? Or was she neither, and yet +all--some ideal of the great Arian tribe, containing in herself all future +types of European women? So I slept and woke, and slept again, day after +day, week after week, in the lazy bullock-waggon, among herds of grey +cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs; among shaggy white horses, +heavy-horned sheep, and silky goats; among tall, bare-limbed men, with +stone axes on their shoulders, and horn bows at their backs. Westward, +through the boundless steppes, whither or why we knew not; but that the +All-Father had sent us forth. And behind us the rosy snow-peaks died into +ghastly grey, lower and lower as every evening came; and before us the +plains spread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever fresh tribes +of gaudy flowers. Behind us dark lines of living beings streamed down +the mountain slopes; around us dark lines crawled along the plains--all +westward, westward ever.--The tribes of the Holy Mountain poured out like +water to replenish the earth and subdue it--lava-streams from the crater +of that great soul-volcano--Titan babies, dumb angels of God, bearing with +them in their unconscious pregnancy the law, the freedom, the science, the +poetry, the Christianity of Europe and the world. + +Westward ever--who could stand against us? We met the wild asses on the +steppe, and tamed them, and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, +and swam broad rivers on their skins. The Python snake lay across our +path; the wolves and the wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts; +we slew them and went on. The forest rose in black tangled barriers: we +hewed our way through them and went on. Strange giant tribes met us, and +eagle-visaged hordes, fierce and foolish; we smote them hip and thigh, and +went on, westward ever. Days and weeks and months rolled on, and our wheels +rolled on with them. New alps rose up before us; we climbed and climbed +them, till, in lonely glens, the mountain walls stood up, and barred our +path. + +Then one arose and said, "Rocks are strong, but the All-Father is stronger. +Let us pray to Him to send the earthquakes, and blast the mountains +asunder." + +So we sat down and prayed, but the earthquake did not come. + +Then another arose and said, "Rocks are strong, but the All-Father is +stronger. If we are the children of the All-Father, we, too, are stronger +than the rocks. Let us portion out the valley, to every man an equal plot +of ground; and bring out the sacred seeds, and sow, and build, and come up +with me and bore the mountain." + +And all said, "It is the voice of God. We will go up with thee, and bore +the mountain; and thou shalt be our king, for thou art wisest, and the +spirit of the All-Father is on thee; and whosoever will not go up with thee +shall die as a coward and an idler." + +So we went up; and in the morning we bored the mountain, and at night we +came down and tilled the ground, and sowed wheat and barley, and planted +orchards. And in the upper glens we met the mining dwarfs, and saw their +tools of iron and copper, and their rock-houses and forges, and envied +them. But they would give us none of them: then our king said-- + +"The All-Father has given all things and all wisdom. Woe to him who keeps +them to himself: we will teach you to sow the sacred seeds; and do you +teach us your smith-work or you die." + +Then the dwarf's taught us smith-work; and we loved them, for they were +wise; and they married our sons and daughters; and we went on boring the +mountain. + +Then some of us arose and said, "We are stronger than our brethren, and +can till more ground than they. Give us a greater portion of land, to each +according to his power." + +But the king said, "Wherefore? that ye may eat and drink more than your +brethren? Have you larger stomachs, as well as stronger arms? As much as +a man needs for himself, that he may do for himself. The rest is the gift +of the All-Father, and we must do His work therewith. For the sake of the +women and the children, for the sake of the sick and the aged, let him that +is stronger go up and work the harder at the mountain." And all men said, +"It is well spoken." + +So we were all equal--for none took more than he needed; and we were all +free, because we loved to obey the king by whom the spirit spoke; and +we were all brothers, because we had one work, and one hope, and one +All-Father. + +But I grew up to be a man; and twenty years were past, and the mountain +was not bored through; and the king grew old, and men began to love their +flocks and herds better than quarrying, and they gave up boring through the +mountain. And the strong and the cunning said, "What can we do with all +this might of ours?" So, because they had no other way of employing it, +they turned it against each other, and swallowed up the heritage of the +weak: and a few grew rich, and many poor; and the valley was filled with +sorrow, for the land became too narrow for them. + +Then I arose and said, "How is this?" And they said, "We must make +provision for our children." + +And I answered, "The All-Father meant neither you nor your children to +devour your brethren. Why do you not break up more waste ground? Why do you +not try to grow more corn in your fields?" + +And they answered, "We till the ground as our forefathers did: we will keep +to the old traditions." + +And I answered, "Oh ye hypocrites! have ye not forgotten the old +traditions, that each man should have his equal share of ground, and that +we should go on working at the mountain, for the sake of the weak and the +children, the fatherless and the widow?" + +And they answered nought for a while. + +Then one said, "Are we not better off as we are? We buy the poor man's +ground for a price, and we pay him his wages for tilling it for us--and we +know better how to manage it than he." + +And I said, "Oh ye hypocrites! See how your lie works! Those who were free +are now slaves. Those who had peace of mind are now anxious from day to day +for their daily bread. And the multitude gets poorer and poorer, while ye +grow fatter and fatter. If ye had gone on boring the mountain, ye would +have had no time to eat up your brethren." + +Then they laughed and said, "Thou art a singer of songs, and a dreamer of +dreams. Let those who want to get through the mountain go up and bore it; +we are well enough here. Come now, sing us pleasant songs, and talk no more +foolish dreams, and we will reward thee." + +Then they brought out a veiled maiden, and said, "Look! her feet are like +ivory, and her hair like threads of gold; and she is the sweetest singer +in the whole valley. And she shall be thine, if thou wilt be like other +people, and prophesy smooth things unto us, and torment us no more with +talk about liberty, equality, and brotherhood; for they never were, and +never will be, on this earth. Living is too hard work to give in to such +fancies." + +And when the maiden's veil was lifted, it was Lillian. And she clasped me +round the neck, and cried, "Come! I will be your bride, and you shall be +rich and powerful; and all men shall speak well of you, and you shall write +songs; and we will sing them together, and feast and play from dawn to +dawn." + +And I wept; and turned me about, and cried, "Wife and child, song and +wealth, are pleasant; but blessed is the work which the All-Father has +given the people to do. Let the maimed and the halt and the blind, the +needy and the fatherless, come up after me, and we will bore the mountain." + +But the rich drove me out, and drove back those who would have followed me. +So I went up by myself, and bored the mountain seven years, weeping; and +every year Lillian came to me, and said, "Come, and be my husband, for +my beauty is fading, and youth passes fast away." But I set my heart +steadfastly to the work. + +And when seven years were over, the poor were so multiplied, that the rich +had not wherewith to pay their labour. And there came a famine in the land, +and many of the poor died. Then the rich said, "If we let these men starve, +they will turn on us, and kill us, for hunger has no conscience, and they +are all but like the beasts that perish." So they all brought, one a +bullock, another a sack of meal, each according to his substance, and fed +the poor therewith; and said to them, "Behold our love and mercy towards +you!" But the more they gave, the less they had wherewithal to pay their +labourers; and the more they gave, the less the poor liked to work; so that +at last they had not wherewithal to pay for tilling the ground, and each +man had to go and till his own, and knew not how; so the land lay waste, +and there was great perplexity. + +Then I went down to them and said, "If you had hearkened to me, and not +robbed your brethren of their land, you would never have come into this +strait; for by this time the mountain would have been bored through." + +Then they cursed the mountain, and me, and Him who made them, and came down +to my cottage at night, and cried, "One-sided and left-handed! father of +confusion, and disciple of dead donkeys, see to what thou hast brought the +land, with thy blasphemous doctrines! Here we are starving, and not only +we, but the poor misguided victims of thy abominable notions!" + +"You have become wondrous pitiful to the poor," said I, "since you found +that they would not starve that you might wanton." + +Then once more Lillian came to me, thin and pale, and worn. "See, I, too, +am starving! and you have been the cause of it; but I will forgive all if +you will help us but this once." + +"How shall I help you?" + +"You are a poet and an orator, and win over all hearts with your talk and +your songs. Go down to the tribes of the plain, and persuade them to send +us up warriors, that we may put down these riotous and idle wretches; and +you shall be king of all the land, and I will be your slave, by day and +night." + +But I went out, and quarried steadfastly at the mountain. + +And when I came back the next evening, the poor had risen against the rich, +one and all, crying, "As you have done to us, so will we do to you;" and +they hunted them down like wild beasts, and slew many of them, and threw +their carcases on the dunghill, and took possession of their land and +houses, and cried, "We will be all free and equal as our forefathers were, +and live here, and eat and drink, and take our pleasure." + +Then I ran out, and cried to them, "Fools I will you do as these rich did, +and neglect the work of God? If you do to them as they have done to you, +you will sin as they sinned, and devour each other at the last, as they +devoured you. The old paths are best. Let each man, rich or poor, have his +equal share of the land, as it was at first, and go up and dig through the +mountain, and possess the good land beyond, where no man need jostle his +neighbour, or rob him, when the land becomes too small for you. Were the +rich only in fault? Did not you, too, neglect the work which the All-Father +had given you, and run every man after his own comfort? So you entered into +a lie, and by your own sin raised up the rich man to be your punishment. +For the last time, who will go up with me to the mountain?" + +Then they all cried with one voice, "We have sinned! We will go up and +pierce the mountain, and fulfil the work which God set to our forefathers." + +We went up, and the first stroke that I struck a crag fell out; and behold, +the light of day! and far below us the good land and large, stretching away +boundless towards the western sun. + + * * * * * + +I sat by the cave's mouth at the dawning of the day. Past me the tribe +poured down, young and old, with their waggons, and their cattle, their +seeds, and their arms, as of old--yet not as of old--wiser and stronger, +taught by long labour and sore affliction. Downward they streamed from +the cave's mouth into the glens, following the guidance of the silver +water-courses; and as they passed me, each kissed my hands and feet, and +cried, "Thou hast saved us--thou hast given up all for us. Come and be our +king!" + +"Nay," I said, "I have been your king this many a year; for I have been the +servant of you all." + +I went down with them into the plain, and called them round me. Many times +they besought me to go with them and lead them. + +"No," I said, "I am old and grey-headed, and I am not as I have been. +Choose out the wisest and most righteous among you, and let him lead you. +But bind him to yourselves with an oath, that whenever he shall say to you, +'Stay here, and let us sit down and build, and dwell here for ever,' you +shall cast him out of his office, and make him a hewer of wood and a drawer +of water, and choose one who will lead you forwards in the spirit of God." + +The crowd opened, and a woman came forward into the circle. Her face was +veiled, but we all knew her for a prophetess. Slowly she stepped into +the midst, chanting a mystic song. Whether it spoke of past, present, or +future, we knew not; but it sank deep into all our hearts. + + "True freedom stands in meekness-- + True strength in utter weakness-- + Justice in forgiveness lies-- + Riches in self-sacrifice-- + Own no rank but God's own spirit-- + Wisdom rule!--and worth inherit! + Work for all, and all employ-- + Share with all, and all enjoy-- + God alike to all has given, + Heaven as Earth, and Earth as Heaven, + When the laud shall find her king again, + And the reign of God is come." + +We all listened, awe-struck. She turned to us and continued: + +"Hearken to me, children of Japhet, the unresting! + +"On the holy mountain of Paradise, in the Asgard of the Hindoo-Koh, in +the cup of the four rivers, in the womb of the mother of nations, in +brotherhood, equality, and freedom, the sons of men were begotten, at the +wedding of the heaven and the earth. Mighty infants, you did the right +you knew not of, and sinned not, because there was no temptation. By +selfishness you fell, and became beasts of prey. Each man coveted the +universe for his own lusts, and not that he might fulfil in it God's +command to people and subdue it. Long have you wandered--and long will you +wander still. For here you have no abiding city. You shall build cities, +and they shall crumble; you shall invent forms of society and religion, and +they shall fail in the hour of need. You shall call the lands by your own +names, and fresh waves of men shall sweep you forth, westward, westward +ever, till you have travelled round the path of the sun, to the place from +whence you came. For out of Paradise you went, and unto Paradise you shall +return; you shall become once more as little children, and renew your youth +like the eagle's. Feature by feature, and limb by limb, ye shall renew +it; age after age, gradually and painfully, by hunger and pestilence, by +superstitions and tyrannies, by need and blank despair, shall you be driven +back to the All-Father's home, till you become as you were before you fell, +and left the likeness of your father for the likeness of the beasts. Out of +Paradise you came, from liberty, equality, and brotherhood, and unto them +you shall return again. You went forth in unconscious infancy--you shall +return in thoughtful manhood.--You went forth in ignorance and need--you +shall return in science and wealth, philosophy and art. You went forth with +the world a wilderness before you--you shall return when it is a garden +behind you. You went forth selfish-savages--you shall return as the +brothers of the Son of God. + +"And for you," she said, looking on me, "your penance is accomplished. You +have learned what it is to be a man. You have lost your life and saved it. +He that gives up house, or land, or wife, or child, for God's sake, it +shall be repaid him an hundred-fold. Awake!" + +Surely I knew that voice. She lifted her veil. The face was Lillian's? +No!--Eleanor's! + +Gently she touched my hand--I sank down into soft, weary happy sleep. + +The spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I +woke to the twittering of the sparrows, and the scent of the poplar leaves, +and the sights and sounds of childhood, and found Eleanor and her uncle +sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife. + +I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking +her uncle's arm, glided from the room. Katie kept stubbornly a smiling +silence, and I was fain to obey my new-found guardian angels. + +What need of many words? Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, +I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate +of birth into another life. The fury of passion had been replaced by a +delicious weakness. The thunder-clouds had passed roaring down the wind, +and the calm bright holy evening was come. My heart, like a fretful child, +had stamped and wept itself to sleep. I was past even gratitude; infinite +submission and humility, feelings too long forgotten, absorbed my whole +being. Only I never dared meet Eleanor's eye. Her voice was like an angel's +when she spoke to me--friend, mother, sister, all in one. But I had a dim +recollection of being unjust to her--of some bar between us. + +Katie and Crossthwaite, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both, +told me, in time, that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. I could not thank +her--the debt was infinite, inexplicable. I felt as if I must speak all my +heart or none; and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of sleepy, +passive wonder, like a new-born babe. + +At last, one day, my kind nurses allowed me to speak a little. I broached +to Crossthwaite the subject which filled my thoughts. "How came I here? How +came you here? and Lady Ellerton? What is the meaning of it all?" + +"The meaning is, that Lady Ellerton, as they call her, is an angel out of +heaven. Ah, Alton! she was your true friend, after all, if you had but +known it, and not that other one at all." + +I turned my head away. + +"Whisht--howld then, Johnny darlint! and don't go tormenting the poor dear +sowl, just when he's comin' round again." + +"No, no! tell me all. I must--I ought--I deserve to bear it. How did she +come here?" + +"Why then, it's my belief, she had her eye on you ever since you came out +of that Bastille, and before that, too; and she found you out at Mackaye's, +and me with you, for I was there looking after you. If it hadn't been for +your illness, I'd have been in Texas now, with our friends, for all's up +with the Charter, and the country's too hot, at least for me. I'm sick of +the whole thing together, patriots, aristocrats, and everybody else, except +this blessed angel. And I've got a couple of hundred to emigrate with; and +what's more, so have you." + +"How's that?" + +"Why, when poor dear old Mackaye's will was read, and you raving mad in the +next room, he had left all his stock-in-trade, that was, the books, to some +of our friends, to form a workmen's library with, and £400 he'd saved, to +be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd G.T.T., and cool down +across the Atlantic, for seven years come the tenth of April." + +So, then, by the lasting love of my adopted father, I was at present at +least out of the reach of want! My heart was ready to overflow at my eyes; +but I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton. What brought +her here, to nurse me as if she had been a sister? + +"Why, then, she lives not far off by. When her husband died, his cousin got +the estate and title, and so she came, Katie tells me, and lived for one +year down somewhere in the East-end among the needlewomen; and spent her +whole fortune on the poor, and never kept a servant, so they say, but made +her own bed and cooked her own dinner, and got her bread with her own +needle, to see what it was really like. And she learnt a lesson there, I +can tell you, and God bless her for it. For now she's got a large house +here by, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the +earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits +which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for +them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them +while they work, and teaches them every day." + +"And takes her victuals with them," said Katie, "share and share alike. She +that was so grand a lady, to demane herself to the poor unfortunate young +things! She's as blessed a saint as any a one in the Calendar, if they'll +forgive me for saying so." + +"Ay! demeaning, indeed! for the best of it is, they're not the respectable +ones only, though she spends hundreds on them--" + +"And sure, haven't I seen it with my own eyes, when I've been there +charing?" + +"Ay, but those she lives with are the fallen and the lost ones--those that +the rich would not set up in business, or help them to emigrate, or lift +them out of the gutter with a pair of tongs, for fear they should stain +their own whitewash in handling them." + +"And sure they're as dacent as meself now, the poor darlints! It was misery +druv 'em to it, every one; perhaps it might hav' druv me the same way, if +I'd a lot o' childer, and Johnny gone to glory--and the blessed saints save +him from that same at all at all!" + +"What! from going to glory?" said John. + +"Och, thin, and wouldn't I just go mad if ever such ill luck happened to +yees as to be taken to heaven in the prime of your days, asthore?" + +And she began sobbing and hugging and kissing the little man; and then +suddenly recollecting herself, scolded him heartily for making such a +"whillybaloo," and thrust him out of my room, to recommence kissing him in +the next, leaving me to many meditations. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +THE TRUE DEMAGOGUE. + + +I used to try to arrange my thoughts, but could not; the past seemed +swept away and buried, like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood. +Ploughed by affliction to the core, my heart lay fallow for every seed that +fell. Eleanor understood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skilful +hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite +used to sit and read to me--from the Bible, from poets, from every book +which could suggest soothing, graceful, or hopeful fancies. Now out of the +stillness of the darkened chamber, one or two priceless sentences of à +Kempis, or a spirit-stirring Hebrew psalm, would fall upon my ear: and then +there was silence again; and I was left to brood over the words in vacancy, +till they became a fibre of my own soul's core. Again and again the stories +of Lazarus and the Magdalene alternated with Milton's Penseroso, or with +Wordsworth's tenderest and most solemn strains. Exquisite prints from the +history of our Lord's life and death were hung one by one, each for a +few days, opposite my bed, where they might catch my eye the moment that +I woke, the moment before I fell asleep. I heard one day the good dean +remonstrating with her on the "sentimentalism" of her mode of treatment. + +"Poor drowned butterfly!" she answered, smiling, "he must be fed with +honey-dew. Have I not surely had practice enough already?" + +"Yes, angel that you are!" answered the old man. "You have indeed had +practice enough!" And lifting her hand reverentially to his lips, he turned +and left the room. + +She sat down by me as I lay, and began to read from Tennyson's +Lotus-Eaters. But it was not reading--it was rather a soft dreamy chant, +which rose and fell like the waves of sound on an Æolian harp. + + "There is sweet music here that softer falls + Than petals from blown roses on the grass, + Or night dews on still waters between wails + Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; + Music that gentler on the spirit lies + Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; + Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. + Here are cool mosses deep, + And through the moss the ivies creep, + And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, + And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. + + "Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, + And utterly consumed with sharp distress, + While all things else have rest from weariness? + All things have rest: why should we toil alone? + We only toil, who are the first of things, + And make perpetual moan, + Still from one sorrow to another thrown: + Nor ever fold our wings. + And cease from wanderings; + Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm, + Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings, + 'There is no joy but calm!' + Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?" + +She paused-- + + My soul was an enchanted boat + Which, like a sleeping swan, did float + Upon the silver waves of her sweet singing. + +Half-unconscious, I looked up. Before me hung a copy of Raffaelle's cartoon +of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. As my eye wandered over it, it seemed +to blend into harmony with the feelings which the poem had stirred. I +seemed to float upon the glassy lake. I watched the vista of the waters +and mountains, receding into the dreamy infinite of the still summer sky. +Softly from distant shores came the hum of eager multitudes; towers and +palaces slept quietly beneath the eastern sun. In front, fantastic fishes, +and the birds of the mountain and the lake, confessed His power, who sat +there in His calm godlike beauty, His eye ranging over all that still +infinity of His own works, over all that wondrous line of figures, which +seemed to express every gradation of spiritual consciousness, from the +dark self-condemned dislike of Judas's averted and wily face, through mere +animal greediness to the first dawnings of surprise, and on to the manly +awe and gratitude of Andrew's majestic figure, and the self-abhorrent +humility of Peter, as he shrank down into the bottom of the skiff, and with +convulsive palms and bursting brow seemed to press out from his inmost +heart the words, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" Truly, +pictures are the books of the unlearned, and of the mis-learned too. +Glorious Raffaelle! Shakspeare of the South! Mighty preacher, to whose +blessed intuition it was given to know all human hearts, to embody in form +and colour all spiritual truths, common alike to Protestant and Papist, to +workman and to sage--oh that I may meet thee before the throne of God, if +it be but to thank thee for that one picture, in which thou didst reveal to +me, in a single glance, every step of my own spiritual history! + +She seemed to follow my eyes, and guess from them the workings of my heart; +for now, in a low, half-abstracted voice, as Diotima may have talked of +old, she began to speak of rest and labour, of death and life; of a labour +which is perfect rest--of a daily death, which is but daily birth--of +weakness, which is the strength of God; and so she wandered on in her +speech to Him who died for us. And gradually she turned to me. She laid one +finger solemnly on my listless palm, as her words and voice became more +intense, more personal. She talked of Him, as Mary may have talked just +risen from His feet. She spoke of Him as I had never heard Him spoken +of before--with a tender passionate loyalty, kept down and softened by +the deepest awe. The sense of her intense belief, shining out in every +lineament of her face, carried conviction to my heart more than ten +thousand arguments could do. It must be true!--Was not the power of it +around her like a glory? She spoke of Him as near us--watching us--in +words of such vivid eloquence that I turned half-startled to her, as if I +expected to see Him standing by her side. + +She spoke of Him as the great Reformer; and yet as the true conservative; +the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in His Bible to every age abysses +of new wisdom, as the times require; and yet the vindicator of all which +is ancient and eternal--the justifier of His own dealings with man from +the beginning. She spoke of Him as the true demagogue--the champion of the +poor; and yet as the true King, above and below all earthly rank; on whose +will alone all real superiority of man to man, all the time-justified and +time-honoured usages of the family, the society, the nation, stand and +shall stand for ever. + + * * * * * + +And then she changed her tone; and in a voice of infinite tenderness she +spoke of Him as the Creator, the Word, the Inspirer, the only perfect +Artist, the Fountain of all Genius. + +She made me feel--would that His ministers had made me feel it before, +since they say that they believe it--that He had passed victorious through +my vilest temptations, that He sympathized with my every struggle. + +She told me how He, in the first dawn of manhood, full of the dim +consciousness of His own power, full of strange yearning presentiments +about His own sad and glorious destiny, went up into the wilderness, as +every youth, above all every genius, must, there to be tempted of the +devil. She told how alone with the wild beasts, and the brute powers of +nature, He saw into the open secret--the mystery of man's twofold life, His +kingship over earth, His sonship under God: and conquered in the might of +His knowledge. How He was tempted, like every genius, to use His creative +powers for selfish ends--to yield to the lust of display and singularity, +and break through those laws which He came to reveal and to fulfil--to do +one little act of evil, that He might secure thereby the harvest of good +which was the object of His life: and how He had conquered in the faith +that He was the Son of God. She told me how He had borne the sorrows of +genius; how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint +pattern of His; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny, +misconception, misinterpretation; how He had fought with bigotry and +stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, knowing full well what it was +to speak to the deaf and the blind; how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the +bitterness of disappointed patriotism, when He had tried in vain to awaken +within a nation of slavish and yet rebellious bigots the consciousness of +their glorious calling.... + +It was too much--I hid my face in the coverlet, and burst out into long, +low, and yet most happy weeping. She rose and went to the window, and +beckoned Katie from the room within. + +"I am afraid," she said, "my conversation has been too much for him." + +"Showers sweeten the air," said Katie; and truly enough, as my own +lightened brain told me. + +Eleanor--for so I must call her now--stood watching me for a few minutes, +and then glided back to the bedside, and sat down again. + +"You find the room quiet?" + +"Wonderfully quiet. The roar of the city outside is almost soothing, and +the noise of every carriage seems to cease suddenly just as it becomes +painfully near." + +"We have had straw laid down," she answered, "all along this part of the +street." + +This last drop of kindness filled the cup to overflowing: a veil fell from +before my eyes--it was she who had been my friend, my guardian angel, from +the beginning! + +"You--you--idiot that I have been! I see it all now. It was you who laid +that paper to catch my eye on that first evening at D * * *!--you paid my +debt to my cousin!--you visited Mackaye in his last illness!" + +She made a sign of assent. + +"You saw from the beginning my danger, my weakness!--you tried to turn +me from my frantic and fruitless passion!--you tried to save me from +the very gulf into which I forced myself!--and I--I have hated you in +return--cherished suspicions too ridiculous to confess, only equalled by +the absurdity of that other dream!" + +"Would that other dream have ever given you peace, even if it had ever +become reality?" + +She spoke gently, slowly, seriously; waiting between each question for the +answer which I dared not give. + +"What was it that you adored? a soul or a face? The inward reality or the +outward symbol, which is only valuable as a sacrament of the loveliness +within?" + +"Ay!" thought I, "and was that loveliness within? What was that beauty but +a hollow mask?" How barren, borrowed, trivial, every thought and word of +hers seemed now, as I looked back upon them, in comparison with the rich +luxuriance, the startling originality, of thought, and deed, and sympathy, +in her who now sat by me, wan and faded, beautiful no more as men call +beauty, but with the spirit of an archangel gazing from those clear, fiery +eyes! And as I looked at her, an emotion utterly new to me arose; utter +trust, delight, submission, gratitude, awe--if it was love, it was love as +of a dog towards his master.... + +"Ay," I murmured, half unconscious that I spoke aloud, "her I loved, and +love no longer; but you, you I worship, and for ever!" + +"Worship God," she answered. "If it shall please you hereafter to call +me friend, I shall refuse neither the name nor its duties. But remember +always, that whatsoever interest I feel in you, and, indeed, have felt from +the first time I saw your poems, I cannot give or accept friendship upon +any ground so shallow and changeable as personal preference. The time was +when I thought it a mark of superior intellect and refinement to be as +exclusive in my friendships as in my theories. Now I have learnt that that +is most spiritual and noble which is also most universal. If we are to call +each other friends, it must be for a reason which equally includes the +outcast and the profligate, the felon, and the slave." + +"What do you mean?" I asked, half disappointed. + +"Only for the sake of Him who died for all alike." + +Why did she rise and call Crossthwaite from the next room where he was +writing? Was it from the womanly tact and delicacy which feared lest my +excited feelings might lead me on to some too daring expression, and give +me the pain of a rebuff, however gentle; or was it that she wished him, as +well as me, to hear the memorable words which followed, to which she seemed +to have been all along alluring me, and calling up in my mind, one by one, +the very questions to which she had prepared the answers? + +"That name!" I answered. "Alas! has it not been in every age the watchword, +not of an all-embracing charity, but of self-conceit and bigotry, +excommunication and persecution?" + +"That is what men have made it; not God, or He who bears it, the Son +of God. Yes, men have separated from each other, slandered each other, +murdered each other in that name, and blasphemed it by that very act. But +when did they unite in any name but that? Look all history through--from +the early churches, unconscious and infantile ideas of God's kingdom, +as Eden was of the human race, when love alone was law, and none said +that aught that he possessed was his own, but they had all things in +common--Whose name was the, bond of unity for that brotherhood, such as +the earth had never seen--when the Roman lady and the Negro slave partook +together at the table of the same bread and wine, and sat together at the +feet of the Syrian tent-maker?--'One is our Master, even Christ, who sits +at the right hand of God, and in Him we are all brothers.' Not self-chosen +preference for His precepts, but the overwhelming faith in His presence, +His rule, His love, bound those rich hearts together. Look onward, too, +at the first followers of St. Bennet and St. Francis, at the Cameronians +among their Scottish hills, or the little persecuted flock who in a dark +and godless time gathered around Wesley by pit mouths and on Cornish +cliffs--Look, too, at the great societies of our own days, which, however +imperfectly, still lovingly and earnestly do their measure of God's work +at home and abroad; and say, when was there ever real union, co-operation, +philanthropy, equality, brotherhood, among men, save in loyalty to +Him--Jesus, who died upon the cross?" + +And she bowed her head reverently before that unseen Majesty; and then +looked up at us again--Those eyes, now brimming full of earnest tears, +would have melted stonier hearts than ours that day. + +"Do you not believe me? Then I must quote against you one of your own +prophets--a ruined angel--even as you might have been. + +"When Camille Desmoulins, the revolutionary, about to die, as is the fate +of such, by the hands of revolutionaries, was asked his age, he answered, +they say, that it was the same as that of the 'bon sans-culotte Jesus.' +I do not blame those who shrink from that speech as blasphemous. I, too, +have spoken hasty words and hard, and prided myself on breaking the bruised +reed, and quenching the smoking flax. Time was when I should have been the +loudest in denouncing poor Camille; but I have long since seemed to see +in those words the distortion of an almighty truth--a truth that shall +shake thrones, and principalities, and powers, and fill the earth with its +sound, as with the trump of God; a prophecy like Balaam's of old--'I shall +see Him, but not nigh; I shall behold Him, but not near.'... Take all +the heroes, prophets, poets, philosophers--where will you find the true +demagogue--the speaker to man simply as man--the friend of publicans and +sinners, the stern foe of the scribe and the Pharisee--with whom was no +respect of persons--where is he? Socrates and Plato were noble; Zerdusht +and Confutzee, for aught we know, were nobler still; but what were they but +the exclusive mystagogues of an enlightened few, like our own Emersons and +Strausses, to compare great with small? What gospel have they, or Strauss, +or Emerson, for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed? The People's +Friend? Where will you find him, but in Jesus of Nazareth?" + +"We feel that; I assure you, we feel that," said Crossthwaite. "There are +thousands of us who delight in His moral teaching, as the perfection of +human excellence." + +"And what gospel is there in a moral teaching? What good news is it to the +savage of St. Giles, to the artizan, crushed by the competition of others +and his own evil habits, to tell him that he can be free--if he can make +himself free?--That all men are his equals--if he can rise to their level, +or pull them down to his?--All men his brothers--if he can only stop them +from devouring him, or making it necessary for him to devour them? Liberty, +equality, and brotherhood? Let the history of every nation, of every +revolution--let your own sad experience speak--have they been aught as yet +but delusive phantoms--angels that turned to fiends the moment you seemed +about to clasp them? Remember the tenth of April, and the plots thereof, +and answer your own hearts!" + +Crossthwaite buried his face in his hands. + +"What!" I answered, passionately, "will you rob us poor creatures of our +only faith, our only hope on earth? Let us be deceived, and deceived again, +yet we will believe! We will hope on in spite of hope. We may die, but the +idea lives for ever. Liberty, equality, and fraternity must come. We know, +we know, that they must come; and woe to those who seek to rob us of our +faith!" + +"Keep, keep your faith," she cried; "for it is not yours, but God's, who +gave it! But do not seek to realize that idea for yourselves." + +"Why, then, in the name of reason and mercy?" + +"Because it is realized already for you. You are free; God has made you +free. You are equals--you are brothers; for He is your king who is no +respecter of persons. He is your king, who has bought for you the rights +of sons of God. He is your king, to whom all power is given in heaven and +earth; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all enemies under His +feet. That was Luther's charter,--with that alone he freed half Europe. +That is your charter, and mine; the everlasting ground of our rights, +our mights, our duties, of ever-gathering storm for the oppressor, +of ever-brightening sunshine for the oppressed. Own no other. Claim +your investiture as free men from none but God. His will, His love, +is a stronger ground, surely, than abstract rights and ethnological +opinions. Abstract rights? What ground, what root have they, but the +ever-changing opinions of men, born anew and dying anew with each fresh +generation?--while the word of God stands sure--'You are mine, and I am +yours, bound to you in an everlasting covenant.' + +"Abstract rights? They are sure to end, in practice, only in the tyranny of +their father--opinion. In favoured England here, the notions of abstract +right among the many are not so incorrect, thanks to three centuries of +Protestant civilization; but only because the right notions suit the many +at this moment. But in America, even now, the same ideas of abstract right +do not interfere with the tyranny of the white man over the black. Why +should they? The white man is handsomer, stronger, cunninger, worthier than +the black. The black is more like an ape than the white man--he is--the +fact is there; and no notions of an abstract right will put that down: +nothing but another fact--a mightier, more universal fact--Jesus of +Nazareth died for the negro as well as for the white. Looked at apart from +Him, each race, each individual of mankind, stands separate and alone, +owing no more brotherhood to each other than wolf to wolf, or pike to +pike--himself a mightier beast of prey--even as he has proved himself in +every age. Looked at as he is, as joined into one family in Christ, his +archetype and head, even the most frantic declamations of the French +democrat, about the majesty of the people, the divinity of mankind, +become rational, reverent, and literal. God's grace outrivals all man's +boasting--'I have said, ye are gods, and ye are all the children of the +Most Highest:'--'children of God, members of Christ, of His body, of His +flesh, and of His bones,'--'kings and priests to God,'--free inheritors of +the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of prudence and courage, +of reverence and love, the spirit of Him who has said, 'Behold, the days +come, when I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and no one shall teach +his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Him, from the least +even unto the greatest. Ay, even on the slaves and on the handmaidens in +those days will I pour out my spirit, saith the Lord!'" + +"And that is really in the Bible?" asked Crossthwaite. + +"Ay"--she went on, her figure dilating, and her eyes flashing, like an +inspired prophetess--"that is in the Bible! What would you more than that? +That is your charter; the only ground of all charters. You, like all +mankind, have had dim inspirations, confused yearnings after your future +destiny, and, like all the world from the beginning, you have tried to +realize, by self-willed methods of your own, what you can only do by God's +inspiration, by God's method. Like the builders of Babel in old time, you +have said, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top shall +reach to heaven'--And God has confounded you as he did them. By mistrust, +division, passion, and folly, you are scattered abroad. Even in these last +few days, the last dregs of your late plot have exploded miserably and +ludicrously--your late companions are in prison, and the name of Chartist +is a laughing-stock as well as an abomination." + +"Good Heavens! Is this true?" asked I, looking at Crossthwaite for +confirmation. + +"Too true, dear boy, too true: and if it had not been for these two angels +here, I should have been in Newgate now!" + +"Yes," she went on. "The Charter seems dead, and liberty further off than +ever." + +"That seems true enough, indeed," said I, bitterly. + +"Yes. But it is because Liberty is God's beloved child, that He will not +have her purity sullied by the touch of the profane. Because He loves the +people, He will allow none but Himself to lead the people. Because He loves +the people, He will teach the people by afflictions. And even now, while +all this madness has been destroying itself, He has been hiding you in His +secret place from the strife of tongues, that you may have to look for a +state founded on better things than acts of parliament, social contracts, +and abstract rights--a city whose foundations are in the eternal promises, +whose builder and maker is God." + +She paused.--"Go on, go on," cried Crossthwaite and I in the same breath. + +"That state, that city, Jesus said, was come--was now within us, had we +eyes to see. And it is come. Call it the church, the gospel, civilization, +freedom, democracy, association, what you will--I shall call it by the name +by which my Master spoke of it--the name which includes all these, and more +than these--the kingdom of God. 'Without observation,' as he promised, +secretly, but mightily, it has been growing, spreading, since that first +Whitsuntide; civilizing, humanizing, uniting this distracted earth. Men +have fancied they found it in this system or in that, and in them only. +They have cursed it in its own name, when they found it too wide for their +own narrow notions. They have cried, 'Lo here!' and 'Lo there!' 'To this +communion!' or 'To that set of opinions.' But it has gone its way--the way +of Him who made all things, and redeemed all things to Himself. In every +age it has been a gospel to the poor, In every age it has, sooner or later, +claimed the steps of civilization, the discoveries of science, as God's +inspirations, not man's inventions. In every age, it has taught men to do +that by God which they had failed in doing without Him. It is now ready, +if we may judge by the signs of the times, once again to penetrate, to +convert, to reorganize, the political and social life of England, perhaps +of the world; to vindicate democracy as the will and gift of God. Take +it for the ground of your rights. If, henceforth, you claim political +enfranchisement, claim it not as mere men, who may be villains, savages, +animals, slaves of their own prejudices and passions; but as members of +Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore +bound to realize it on earth. All other rights are mere mights--mere +selfish demands to become tyrants in your turn. If you wish to justify your +Charter, do it on that ground. Claim your share in national life, only +because the nation is a spiritual body, whose king is the Son of God; whose +work, whose national character and powers, are allotted to it by the Spirit +of Christ. Claim universal suffrage, only on the ground of the universal +redemption of mankind--the universal priesthood of Christians. That +argument will conquer, when all have failed; for God will make it conquer. +Claim the disenfranchisement of every man, rich or poor, who breaks +the laws of God and man, not merely because he is an obstacle to you, +but because he is a traitor to your common King in heaven, and to the +spiritual kingdom of which he is a citizen. Denounce the effete idol +of property-qualification, not because it happens to strengthen class +interests against you, but because, as your mystic dream reminded you, and, +therefore, as you knew long ago, there is no real rank, no real power, but +worth; and worth consists not in property, but in the grace of God. Claim, +if you will, annual parliaments, as a means of enforcing the responsibility +of rulers to the Christian community, of which they are to be, not the +lords, but the ministers--the servants of all. But claim these, and all +else for which you long, not from man, but from God, the King of men. And +therefore, before you attempt to obtain them, make yourselves worthy of +them--perhaps by that process you will find some of them have become less +needful. At all events, do not ask, do not hope, that He will give them to +you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them +from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings. +Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last +half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for +those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that +those who had them were equally unfit; but thank God, if the case be indeed +so, that your incapacity was not added to theirs, to make confusion worse +confounded! Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in Christ, and +become new creatures. With those miserable, awful farce tragedies of April +and June, let old things pass away, and all things become new. Believe +that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One whose servants must not +fight. He that believeth, as the prophet says, will not make haste. Beloved +suffering brothers! are not your times in the hand of One who loved you to +the death, who conquered, as you must do, not by wrath, but by martyrdom? +Try no more to meet Mammon with his own weapons, but commit your cause to +Him who judges righteously, who is even now coming out of His place to +judge the earth, and to help the fatherless and poor unto their right, that +the man of the world may be no more exalted against them--the poor man of +Nazareth, crucified for you!" + +She ceased, and there was silence for a few moments, as if angels were +waiting, hushed, to carry our repentance to the throne of Him we had +forgotten. + +Crossthwaite had kept his face fast buried in his hands; now he looked up +with brimming eyes-- + +"I see it--I see it all now. Oh, my God! my God! what infidels we have +been!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +MIRACLES AND SCIENCE. + + +Sunrise, they say, often at first draws up and deepens the very mists +which it is about to scatter: and even so, as the excitement of my first +conviction cooled, dark doubts arose to dim the new-born light of hope and +trust within me. The question of miracles had been ever since I had read +Strauss my greatest stumbling-block--perhaps not unwillingly, for my doubts +pampered my sense of intellectual acuteness and scientific knowledge; and +"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." But now that they interfered +with nobler, more important, more immediately practical ideas, I longed +to have them removed--I longed even to swallow them down on trust--to +take the miracles "into the bargain" as it were, for the sake of that +mighty gospel of deliverance for the people which accompanied them. Mean +subterfuge! which would not, could not, satisfy me. The thing was too +precious, too all-important, to take one tittle of it on trust. I could +not bear the consciousness of one hollow spot--the nether fires of doubt +glaring through, even at one little crevice. I took my doubts to Lady +Ellerton--Eleanor, as I must now call her, for she never allowed herself +to be addressed by her title--and she referred me to her uncle-- + +"I could say somewhat on that point myself. But since your doubts are +scientific ones, I had rather that you should discuss them with one whose +knowledge of such subjects you, and all England with you, must revere." + +"Ah, but--pardon me; he is a clergyman." + +"And therefore bound to prove, whether he believes in his own proof or not. +Unworthy suspicion!" she cried, with a touch of her old manner. "If you had +known that man's literary history for the last thirty years, you would not +suspect him, at least, of sacrificing truth and conscience to interest, or +to fear of the world's insults." + +I was rebuked; and not without hope and confidence, I broached the question +to the good dean when he came in--as he happened to do that very day. + +"I hardly like to state my difficulties," I began--"for I am afraid that I +must hurt myself in your eyes by offending your--prejudices, if you will +pardon so plain-spoken an expression." + +"If," he replied, in his bland courtly way, "I am so unfortunate as to have +any prejudices left, you cannot do me a greater kindness than by offending +them--or by any other means, however severe--to make me conscious of the +locality of such a secret canker." + +"But I am afraid that your own teaching has created, or at least +corroborated, these doubts of mine." + +"How so?" + +"You first taught me to revere science. You first taught me to admire and +trust the immutable order, the perfect harmony of the laws of Nature." + +"Ah! I comprehend now!" he answered, in a somewhat mournful tone--"How much +we have to answer for! How often, in our carelessness, we offend those +little ones, whose souls are precious in the sight of God! I have thought +long and earnestly on the very subject which now distresses you; perhaps +every doubt which has passed through your mind, has exercised my own; +and, strange to say, you first set me on that new path of thought. A +conversation which passed between us years ago at D * * * * on the +antithesis of natural and revealed religion--perhaps you recollect it?" + +Yes, I recollected it better than he fancied, and recollected too--I thrust +the thought behind me--it was even yet intolerable. + +"That conversation first awoke in me the sense of an hitherto unconscious +inconsistency--a desire to reconcile two lines of thought--which I had +hitherto considered as parallel, and impossible to unite. To you, and to my +beloved niece here, I owe gratitude for that evening's talk; and you are +freely welcome to all my conclusions, for you have been, indirectly, the +originator of them all." + +"Then, I must confess, that miracles seem to me impossible, just because +they break the laws of Nature. Pardon me--but there seems something +blasphemous in supposing that God can mar His own order: His power I do not +call in question, but the very thought of His so doing is abhorrent to me." + +"It is as abhorrent to me as it can be to you, to Goethe, or to Strauss; +and yet I believe firmly in our Lord's miracles." + +"How so, if they break the laws of Nature?" + +"Who told you, my dear young friend, that to break the customs of Nature, +is to break her laws? A phenomenon, an appearance, whether it be a miracle +or a comet, need not contradict them because it is rare, because it is as +yet not referable to them. Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are +her invisible ones. All analyses (I think you know enough to understand +my terms), whether of appearances, of causes, or of elements, only lead +us down to fresh appearances--we cannot see a law, let the power of our +lens be ever so immense. The true causes remain just as impalpable, +as unfathomable as ever, eluding equally our microscope and our +induction--ever tending towards some great primal law, as Mr. Grove has +well shown lately in his most valuable pamphlet--some great primal law, I +say, manifesting itself, according to circumstances, in countless diverse +and unexpected forms--till all that the philosopher as well as the divine +can say, is--the Spirit of Life, impalpable, transcendental, direct from +God, is the only real cause. 'It bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest +the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it +goeth.' What, if miracles should be the orderly result of some such deep, +most orderly, and yet most spiritual law?" + +"I feel the force of your argument, but--" + +"But you will confess, at least, that you, after the fashion of the crowd, +have begun your argument by begging the very question in dispute, and may +have, after all, created the very difficulty which torments you." + +"I confess it; but I cannot see how the miracles of Jesus--of our +Lord--have anything of order in them." + +"Tell me, then--to try the Socratic method--is disease, or health, the +order and law of Nature?" + +"Health, surely; we all confess that by calling diseases disorders." + +"Then, would one who healed diseases be a restorer, or a breaker of order?" + +"A restorer, doubtless; but--" + +"Like a patient scholar, and a scholarly patient, allow me to 'exhibit' +my own medicines according to my own notion of the various crises of your +distemper. I assure you I will not play you false, or entrap you by quips +and special pleading. You are aware that our Lord's miracles were almost +exclusively miracles of healing--restorations of that order of health which +disease was breaking--that when the Scribes and Pharisees, superstitious +and sense-bound, asked him for a sign from heaven, a contra-natural +prodigy, he refused them as peremptorily as he did the fiend's 'Command +these stones that they be made bread.' You will quote against me the water +turned into wine, as an exception to this rule. St. Augustine answered that +objection centuries ago, by the same argument as I am now using. Allow +Jesus to have been the Lord of Creation, and what was he doing then, but +what he does in the maturing of every grape--transformed from air and +water even as that wine in Cana? Goethe, himself, unwittingly, has made +Mephistopheles even say as much as that-- + + "Wine is sap, and grapes are wood, + The wooden board yields wine as good." + +"But the time?--so infinitely shorter than that which Nature usually +occupies in the process?" + +"Time and space are no Gods, as a wise German says; and as the electric +telegraph ought already to have taught you. They are customs, but who has +proved them to be laws of Nature? No; analyse these miracles one by one, +fairly, carefully, scientifically, and you will find that if you want +prodigies really blasphemous and absurd, infractions of the laws of Nature, +amputated limbs growing again, and dead men walking away with their heads +under their arms, you must go to the Popish legends, but not to the +miracles of the Gospels. And now for your 'but'--" + +"The raising of the dead to life? Surely death is the appointed end of +every animal--ay, of every species, and of man among the rest." + +"Who denies it? But is premature death?--the death of Jairus's daughter, of +the widow's son at Nain, the death of Jesus himself, in the prime of youth +and vigour--or rather that gradual decay of ripe old age, through which I +now, thank God, so fast am travelling? What nobler restoration of order, +what clearer vindication of the laws of Nature from the disorder of +diseases, than to recall the dead to their natural and normal period of +life?" + +I was silent a few moments, having nothing to answer; then-- + +"After all, these may have been restorations of the law of Nature. But why +was the law broken in order to restore it? The Tenth of April has taught +me, at least, that disorder cannot cast disorder out." + +"Again I ask, why do you assume the very point in question? Again I ask, +who knows what really are the laws of Nature? You have heard Bacon's golden +rule--'Nature is conquered by obeying her?'" + +"I have." + +"Then who more likely, who more certain, to fulfil that law to hitherto +unattained perfection, than He who came to obey, not outward nature merely, +but, as Bacon meant, the inner ideas, the spirit of Nature, which is the +will of God?--He who came to do utterly, not His own will, but the will +of the Father who sent Him? Who is so presumptuous as to limit the future +triumphs of science? Surely no one who has watched her giant strides during +the last century. Shall Stephenson and Faraday, and the inventors of the +calculating machine, and the electric telegraph, have fulfilled such +wonders by their weak and partial obedience to the 'Will of God expressed +in things'--and He who obeyed, even unto the death, have possessed no +higher power than theirs?" + +"Indeed," I said, "your words stagger me. But there is another old +objection which they have reawakened in my mind. You will say I am shifting +my ground sadly. But you must pardon me" + +"Let us hear. They need not be irrelevant. The unconscious logic of +association is often deeper and truer than any syllogism." + +"These modern discoveries in medicine seem to show that Christ's miracles +may be attributed to natural causes." + +"And thereby justify them. For what else have I been arguing. The +difficulty lies only in the rationalist's shallow and sensuous view of +Nature, and in his ambiguous, slip-slop trick of using the word natural +to mean, in one sentence, 'material,' and in the next, as I use it, only +'normal and orderly.' Every new wonder in medicine which this great age +discovers--what does it prove, but that Christ need have broken no natural +laws to do that of old, which can be done now without breaking them--if you +will but believe that these gifts of healing are all inspired and revealed +by Him who is the Great Physician, the Life, the Lord of that vital energy +by whom all cures are wrought. + +"The surgeons of St. George's make the boy walk who has been lame from his +mother's womb. But have they given life to a single bone or muscle of his +limbs? They have only put them into that position--those circumstances in +which the God-given life in them can have its free and normal play, and +produce the cure which they only assist. I claim that miracle of science, +as I do all future ones, as the inspiration of Him who made the lame +to walk in Judea, not by producing new organs, but by His creative +will--quickening and liberating those which already existed. + +"The mesmerist, again, says that he can cure a spirit of infirmity, an +hysteric or paralytic patient, by shedding forth on them his own vital +energy; and, therefore he will have it, that Christ's miracles were but +mesmeric feats. I grant, for the sake of argument, that he possesses +the power which he claims; though I may think his facts too new, too +undigested, often too exaggerated, to claim my certain assent. But, I say, +I take you on your own ground; and, indeed, if man be the image of God, his +vital energy may, for aught I know, be able, like God's, to communicate +some spark of life--But then, what must have been the vital energy of Him +who was the life itself; who was filled without measure with the spirit, +not only of humanity, but with that of God the Lord and Giver of life? Do +but let the Bible tell its own story; grant, for the sake of argument, +the truth of the dogmas which it asserts throughout, and it becomes +a consistent whole. When a man begins, as Strauss does, by assuming +the falsity of its conclusions, no wonder if he finds its premises a +fragmentary chaos of contradictions." + +"And what else?" asked Eleanor, passionately--"what else is the meaning +of that highest human honour, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but a +perennial token that the same life-giving spirit is the free right of all?" + +And thereon followed happy, peaceful, hopeful words, which the reader, if +he call himself a Christian, ought to be able to imagine for himself. I am +afraid that writing from memory, I should do as little justice to them as +I have to the dean's arguments in this chapter. Of the consequences which +they produced in me, I will speak anon. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +NEMESIS. + + +It was a month or more before I summoned courage to ask after my cousin. + +Eleanor looked solemnly at me. + +"Did you not know it? He is dead." + +"Dead!" I was almost stunned by the announcement. + +"Of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago; and not only he, but the servant +who brushed his clothes, and the shopman, who had a few days before, +brought him a new coat home." + +"How did you learn all this?" + +"From Mr. Crossthwaite. But the strangest part of the sad story is to come. +Crossthwaite's suspicions were aroused by some incidental circumstance, and +knowing of Downes's death, and the fact that you most probably caught your +fever in that miserable being's house, he made such inquiries as satisfied +him that it was no other than your cousin's coat--" + +"Which covered the corpses in that fearful chamber?" + +"It was indeed." + +Just, awful God. And this was the consistent Nemesis of all poor +George's thrift and cunning, of his determination to carry the +buy-cheap-and-sell-dear commercialism, in which he had been brought up, +into every act of life! Did I rejoice? No; all revenge, all spite had been +scourged out of me. I mourned for him as for a brother, till the thought +flashed across me--Lillian was free. Half unconscious, I stammered her name +inquiringly. + +"Judge for yourself," answered Eleanor, mildly, yet with a deep, severe +meaning in her tone. + +I was silent. + + * * * * * + +The tempest in my heart was ready to burst forth again; but she, my +guardian angel, soothed it for me. + +"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the fever, +and, alas! less resignation or peace within, than those who love her +would have wished to see--have worn her down. Little remains now of that +loveliness--" + +"Which I idolized in my folly!" + +"Thank God, thank God! that you see that at last: I knew it all along. I +knew that there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon--nothing +to satisfy your intellect--and, therefore, I tried to turn you from your +dream. I did it harshly, angrily, too sharply, yet not explicitly enough. I +ought to have made allowances for you. I should have known how enchanting, +intoxicating, mere outward perfections must have been to one of your +perceptions, shut out so long as you had been from the beautiful in art and +nature. But I was cruel. Alas! I had not then learnt to sympathize; and I +have often since felt with terror that I, too, may have many of your sins +to answer for; that I, even I, helped to drive you on to bitterness and +despair." + +"Oh, do not say so! You have done to me, meant to me, nothing but good." + +"Be not too sure of that. You little know me. You little know the pride +which I have fostered--even the mean anger against you, for being the +protégé of any one but myself. That exclusiveness, and shyness, and proud +reserve, is the bane of our English character--it has been the bane of +mine--daily I strive to root it out. Come--I will do so now. You wonder why +I am here. You shall hear somewhat of my story; and do not fancy that I am +showing you a peculiar mark of honour or confidence. If the history of my +life can be of use to the meanest, they are welcome to the secrets of my +inmost heart. + +"I was my parents' only child, an heiress, highly born, and highly +educated. Every circumstance of humanity which could pamper pride was mine, +and I battened on the poison. I painted, I sang, I wrote in prose and +verse--they told me, not without success. Men said that I was beautiful--I +knew that myself, and revelled and gloried in the thought. Accustomed to +see myself the centre of all my parents' hopes and fears, to be surrounded +by flatterers, to indulge in secret the still more fatal triumph of +contempt for those I thought less gifted than myself, self became the +centre of my thoughts. Pleasure was all I thought of. But not what the +vulgar call pleasure. That I disdained, while, like you, I worshipped all +that was pleasurable to the intellect and the taste. The beautiful was my +God. I lived, in deliberate intoxication, on poetry, music, painting, and +every anti-type of them which I could find in the world around. At last I +met with--one whom you once saw. He first awoke in me the sense of the vast +duties and responsibilities of my station--his example first taught me to +care for the many rather than for the few. It was a blessed lesson: yet +even that I turned to poison, by making self, still self, the object of my +very benevolence. To be a philanthropist, a philosopher, a feudal queen, +amid the blessings and the praise of dependent hundreds--that was my new +ideal; for that I turned the whole force of my intellect to the study +of history, of social and economic questions. From Bentham and Malthus +to Fourier and Proudhon, I read them all. I made them all fit into that +idol-temple of self which I was rearing, and fancied that I did my duty, by +becoming one of the great ones of the earth. My ideal was not the crucified +Nazarene, but some Hairoun Alraschid, in luxurious splendour, pampering +his pride by bestowing as a favour those mercies which God commands as +the right of all. I thought to serve God, forsooth, by serving Mammon and +myself. Fool that I was! I could not see God's handwriting on the wall +against me. 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom +of heaven!'... + +"You gave me, unintentionally, a warning hint. The capabilities which I +saw in you made me suspect that those below might be more nearly my equals +than I had yet fancied. Your vivid descriptions of the misery among whole +classes of workmen--misery caused and ever increased by the very system of +society itself--gave a momentary shock to my fairy palace. They drove me +back upon the simple old question, which has been asked by every honest +heart, age after age, 'What right have I to revel in luxury while thousands +are starving? Why do I pride myself on doling out to them small fractions +of that wealth, which, if sacrificed utterly and at once, might help +to raise hundreds to a civilization as high as my own?' I could not +face the thought; and angry with you for having awakened it, however +unintentionally, I shrank back behind the pitiable, worn-out fallacy, that +luxury was necessary to give employment. I knew that it was a fallacy; I +knew that the labour spent in producing unnecessary things for one rich man +may just as well have gone in producing necessaries for a hundred poor, or +employ the architect and the painter for public bodies as well as private +individuals. That even for the production of luxuries, the monopolizing +demand of the rich was not required--that the appliances of real +civilization, the landscapes, gardens, stately rooms, baths, books, +pictures, works of art, collections of curiosities, which now went to +pamper me alone--me, one single human soul--might be helping, in an +associate society, to civilize a hundred families, now debarred from them +by isolated poverty, without robbing me of an atom of the real enjoyment or +benefit of them. I knew it, I say, to be a fallacy, and yet I hid behind it +from the eye of God. Besides, 'it always had been so--the few rich, and the +many poor. I was but one more among millions.'" + +She paused a moment as if to gather strength, and then continued: + +"The blow came. My idol--for he, too, was an idol--To please him I had +begun--To please myself in pleasing him, I was trying to become great--and +with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the +triumph of my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty +change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me +to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine +insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that +period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that nothing +henceforth could seem strange to me. I had broken the yoke of custom and +opinion. My only ground was now the bare realities of human life and duty. +In poverty and loneliness I thought out the problems of society, and seemed +to myself to have found the one solution--self-sacrifice. Following my +first impulse, I had given largely to every charitable institution I could +hear of--God forbid that I should regret those gifts--yet the money, I +soon found, might have been better spent. One by one, every institution +disappointed me; they seemed, after all, only means for keeping the poor +in their degradation, by making it just not intolerable to them--means for +enabling Mammon to draw fresh victims into his den, by taking off his +hands those whom he had already worn out into uselessness. Then I tried +association among my own sex--among the most miserable and degraded of +them. I simply tried to put them into a position in which they might work +for each other, and not for a single tyrant; in which that tyrant's profits +might be divided among the slaves themselves. Experienced men warned me +that I should fail; that such a plan would be destroyed by the innate +selfishness and rivalry of human nature; that it demanded what was +impossible to find, good faith, fraternal love, overruling moral influence. +I answered, that I knew that already; that nothing but Christianity alone +could supply that want, but that it could and should supply it; that I +would teach them to live as sisters, by living with them as their sister +myself. To become the teacher, the minister, the slave of those whom I was +trying to rescue, was now my one idea; to lead them on, not by machinery, +but by precept, by example, by the influence of every gift and talent which +God had bestowed upon me; to devote to them my enthusiasm, my eloquence, my +poetry, my art, my science; to tell them who had bestowed their gifts on +me, and would bestow, to each according to her measure, the same on them; +to make my workrooms, in one word, not a machinery, but a family. And +I have succeeded--as others will succeed, long after my name, my small +endeavours, are forgotten amid the great new world--new Church I should +have said--of enfranchised and fraternal labour." + +And this was the suspected aristocrat! Oh, my brothers, my brothers! little +you know how many a noble soul, among those ranks which you consider only +as your foes, is yearning to love, to help, to live and die for you, did +they but know the way! Is it their fault if God has placed them where they +are? Is it their fault, if they refuse to part with their wealth, before +they are sure that such a sacrifice would really be a mercy to you? Show +yourselves worthy of association. Show that you can do justly, love mercy, +and walk humbly with your God, as brothers before one Father, subjects of +one crucified King--and see then whether the spirit of self-sacrifice is +dead among the rich! See whether there are not left in England yet seven +thousand who have not bowed the knee to Mammon, who will not fear to "give +their substance to the free," if they find that the Son has made you +free--free from your own sins, as well as from the sins of others! + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. + + +"But after all," I said one day, "the great practical objection still +remains unanswered--the clergy? Are we to throw ourselves into their +hands after all? Are we, who have been declaiming all our lives against +priestcraft, voluntarily to forge again the chains of our slavery to a +class whom we neither trust nor honour?" + +She smiled. "If you will examine the Prayer-Book, you will not find, as +far as I am aware, anything which binds a man to become the slave of +the priesthood, voluntarily or otherwise. Whether the people become +priest-ridden or not, hereafter, will depend, as it always has done, +utterly on themselves. As long as the people act upon their spiritual +liberty, and live with eyes undimmed by superstitious fear, fixed in loving +boldness on their Father in heaven, and their King, the first-born among +many brethren, the priesthood will remain, as God intended them, only the +interpreters and witnesses of His will and His kingdom. But let them turn +their eyes from Him to aught in earth or heaven beside, and there will be +no lack of priestcraft, of veils to hide Him from them, tyrants to keep +them from Him, idols to ape His likeness. A sinful people will be sure to +be a priest-ridden people; in reality, though not in name; by journalists +and demagogues, if not by class-leaders and popes: and of the two, I +confess I should prefer a Hildebrand to an O'Flynn." + +"But," I replied, "we do not love, we do not trust, we do not respect the +clergy. Has their conduct to the masses for the last century deserved that +we should do so? Will you ask us to obey the men whom we despise?" + +"God forbid!" she answered. "But you must surely be aware of the +miraculous, ever-increasing improvement in the clergy." + +"In morals," I said, "and in industry, doubtless; but not upon those points +which are to us just now dearer than their morals or their industry, +because they involve the very existence of our own industry and our own +morals--I mean, social and political subjects. On them the clergy seem to +me as ignorant, as bigoted, as aristocratic as ever." + +"But, suppose that there were a rapidly-increasing class among the clergy, +who were willing to help you to the uttermost--and you must feel that their +help would be worth having--towards the attainment of social reform, if you +would waive for a time merely political reform?" + +"What?" I said, "give up the very ideas for which we have struggled, and +sinned, and all but died? and will struggle, and, if need be, die for +still, or confess ourselves traitors to the common weal?" + +"The Charter, like its supporters, must die to itself before it lives to +God. Is it not even now farther off than ever?" + +"It seems so indeed--but what do you mean?" + +"You regarded the Charter as an absolute end. You made a selfish and a +self-willed idol of it. And therefore God's blessing did not rest on it or +you." + +"We want it as a means as well as an end--as a means for the highest and +widest social reform, as well as a right dependent on eternal justice." + +"Let the working classes prove that, then," she replied, "in their actions +now. If it be true, as I would fain believe it to be, let them show that +they are willing to give up their will to God's will; to compass those +social reforms by the means which God puts in their way, and wait for His +own good time to give them, or not to give them, those means which they in +their own minds prefer. This is what I meant by saying that Chartism must +die to itself before it has a chance of living to God. You must feel, too, +that Chartism has sinned--has defiled itself in the eyes of the wise, the +good, the gentle. Your only way now to soften the prejudice against it is +to show that you can live like men and brothers and Christians without it. +You cannot wonder if the clergy shall object awhile to help you towards +that Charter, which the majority of you demanded for the express purpose of +destroying the creed which the clergy do believe, however badly they may +have acted upon it." + +"It is all true enough--bitterly true. But yet, why do we need the help of +the clergy?" + +"Because you need the help of the whole nation; because there are other +classes to be considered beside yourselves; because the nation is neither +the few nor the many, but the all; because it is only by the co-operation +of all the members of a body, that any one member can fulfil its calling in +health and freedom; because, as long as you stand aloof from the clergy, or +from any other class, through pride, self-interest, or wilful ignorance, +you are keeping up those very class distinctions of which you and I too +complain, as 'hateful equally to God and to his enemies;' and, finally, +because the clergy are the class which God has appointed to unite all +others; which, in as far as it fulfils its calling, and is indeed a +priesthood, is above and below all rank, and knows no man after the flesh, +but only on the ground of his spiritual worth, and his birthright in that +kingdom which is the heritage of all." + +"Truly," I answered, "the idea is a noble one--But look at the reality! Has +not priestly pandering to tyrants made the Church, in every age, a scoff +and a byword among free men?" + +"May it ever do so," she replied, "whenever such a sin exists! But yet, +look at the other side of the picture. Did not the priesthood, in the +first ages, glory not in the name, but, what is better, in the office, of +democrats? Did not the Roman tyrants hunt them down as wild beasts, because +they were democrats, proclaiming to the slave and to the barbarian a +spiritual freedom and a heavenly citizenship, before which the Roman well +knew his power must vanish into naught? Who, during the invasion of the +barbarians, protected the poor against their conquerors? Who, in the middle +age, stood between the baron and his serfs? Who, in their monasteries, +realized spiritual democracy,--the nothingness of rank and wealth, the +practical might of co-operation and self-sacrifice? Who delivered England +from the Pope? Who spread throughout every cottage in the land the Bible +and Protestantism, the book and the religion which declares that a man's +soul is free in the sight of God? Who, at the martyr's stake in Oxford, +'lighted the candle in England that shall never be put out?' Who, by +suffering, and not by rebellion, drove the last perjured Stuart from his +throne, and united every sect and class in one of the noblest steps in +England's progress? You will say these are the exceptions; I say nay; they +are rather a few great and striking manifestations of an influence +which has been, unseen though not unfelt, at work for ages, converting, +consecrating, organizing, every fresh invention of mankind, and which is +now on the eve of christianizing democracy, as it did Mediæval Feudalism, +Tudor Nationalism, Whig Constitutionalism; and which will succeed in +christianizing it, and so alone making it rational, human, possible; +because the priesthood alone, of all human institutions, testifies of +Christ the King of men, the Lord of all things, the inspirer of all +discoveries; who reigns, and will reign, till He has put all things under +His feet, and the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of God and +of His Christ. Be sure, as it always has been, so will it be now. Without +the priesthood there is no freedom for the people. Statesmen know it; and, +therefore, those who would keep the people fettered, find it necessary +to keep the priesthood fettered also. The people never can be themselves +without co-operation with the priesthood; and the priesthood never can be +themselves without co-operation with the people. They may help to make a +sect-Church for the rich, as they have been doing, or a sect-Church for +paupers (which is also the most subtle form of a sect-Church for the rich), +as a party in England are trying now to do--as I once gladly would have +done myself: but if they would be truly priests of God, and priests of +the Universal Church, they must be priests of the people, priests of the +masses, priests after the likeness of Him who died on the cross." + +"And are there any men," I said, "who believe this? and, what is more, have +courage to act upon it, now in the very hour of Mammon's triumph?" + +"There are those who are willing, who are determined, whatever it may cost +them, to fraternize with those whom they take shame to themselves for +having neglected; to preach and to organize, in concert with them, a Holy +War against the social abuses which are England's shame; and, first +and foremost, against the fiend of competition. They do not want to be +dictators to the working men. They know that they have a message to the +artizan, but they know, too, that the artizan has a message to them; and +they are not afraid to hear it. They do not wish to make him a puppet for +any system of their own; they only are willing, if he will take the hand +they offer him, to devote themselves, body and soul, to the great end of +enabling the artizan to govern himself; to produce in the capacity of +a free man, and not of a slave; to eat the food he earns, and wear the +clothes he makes. Will your working brothers co-operate with these men? +Are they, do you think, such bigots as to let political differences stand +between them and those who fain would treat them as their brothers; or will +they fight manfully side by side with them in the battle against Mammon, +trusting to God, that if in anything they are otherwise minded, He will, in +His own good time, reveal even that unto them? Do you think, to take one +instance, the men of your own trade would heartily join a handful of these +men in an experiment of associate labour, even though there should be a +clergyman or two among them?" + +"Join them?" I said. "Can you ask the question? I, for one, would devote +myself, body and soul, to any enterprise so noble. Crossthwaite would ask +for nothing higher, than to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to an +establishment of associate workmen. But, alas! his fate is fixed for the +New World; and mine, I verily believe, for sickness and the grave. And yet +I will answer for it, that, in the hopes of helping such a project, he +would give up Mackaye's bequest, for the mere sake of remaining in England; +and for me, if I have but a month of life, it is at the service of such men +as you describe." + +"Oh!" she said, musingly, "if poor Mackaye had but had somewhat more faith +in the future, that fatal condition would perhaps never have been attached +to his bequest. And yet, perhaps, it is better as it is. Crossthwaite's +mind may want quite, as much as yours does, a few years of a simpler and +brighter atmosphere to soften and refresh it again. Besides, your health is +too weak, your life, I know, too valuable to your class, for us to trust +you on such a voyage alone. He must go with you." + +"With me?" I said. "You must be misinformed; I have no thought of leaving +England." + +"You know the opinion of the physicians?" + +"I know that my life is not likely to be a long one; that immediate removal +to a southern, if possible to a tropical climate, is considered the only +means of preserving it. For the former I care little; _non est tanti +vivere_. And, indeed, the latter, even if it would succeed, is impossible. +Crossthwaite will live and thrive by the labour of his hands; while, for +such a helpless invalid as I to travel, would be to dissipate the little +capital which Mackaye has left me. + +"The day will come, when society will find it profitable, as well as just, +to put the means of preserving life by travel within the reach of the +poorest. But individuals must always begin by setting the examples, which +the state too slowly, though surely (for the world is God's world after +all), will learn to copy. All is arranged for you. Crossthwaite, you know, +would have sailed ere now, had it not been for your fever. Next week +you start with him for Texas, No; make no objections. All expenses are +defrayed--no matter by whom." + +"By you! By you! Who else?" + +"Do you think that I monopolize the generosity of England? Do you think +warm hearts beat only in the breasts of working men? But, if it were I, +would not that be only another reason for submitting? You must go. You will +have, for the next three years, such an allowance as will support you in +comfort, whether you choose to remain stationary, or, as I hope, to travel +southward into Mexico. Your passage-money is already paid." + +Why should I attempt to describe my feelings? I gasped for breath, and +looked stupidly at her for a minute or two.--The second darling hope of my +life within my reach, just as the first had been snatched from me! At last +I found words. + +"No, no, noble lady! Do not tempt me! Who am I, the slave of impulse, +useless, worn out in mind and body, that you should waste such generosity +upon me? I do not refuse from the honest pride of independence; I have not +man enough left in me even for that. But will you, of all people, ask me +to desert the starving suffering thousands, to whom my heart, my honour +are engaged; to give up the purpose of my life, and pamper my fancy in a +luxurious paradise, while they are slaving here?" + +"What? Cannot God find champions for them when you are gone? Has he not +found them already? Believe me, that Tenth of April, which you fancied the +death-day of liberty, has awakened a spirit in high as well as in low life, +which children yet unborn will bless." + +"Oh, do not mistake me! Have I not confessed my own weakness? But if I have +one healthy nerve left in me, soul or body, it will retain its strength +only as long as it thrills with devotion to the people's cause. If I live, +I must live among them, for them. If I die, I must die at my post. I could +not rest, except in labour. I dare not fly, like Jonah, from the call of +God. In the deepest shade of the virgin forests, on the loneliest peak of +the Cordilleras, He would find me out; and I should hear His still small +voice reproving me, as it reproved the fugitive patriot-seer of old--What +doest thou here, Elijah?" + +I was excited, and spoke, I am afraid, after my custom, somewhat too +magniloquently. But she answered only with a quiet smile: + +"So you are a Chartist still?" + +"If by a Chartist you mean one who fancies that a change in mere political +circumstances will bring about a millennium, I am no longer one. That dream +is gone--with others. But if to be a Chartist is to love my brothers with +every faculty of my soul--to wish to live and die struggling for their +rights, endeavouring to make them, not electors merely, but fit to be +electors, senators, kings, and priests to God and to His Christ--if that +be the Chartism of the future, then am I sevenfold a Chartist, and ready +to confess it before men, though I were thrust forth from every door in +England." + +She was silent a moment. + +"'The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.' +Surely the old English spirit has cast its madness, and begins to speak +once more as it spoke in Naseby fights and Smithfield fires!" + +"And yet you would quench it in me amid the enervating climate of the +tropics." + +"Need it be quenched there? Was it quenched in Drake, in Hawkins, in the +conquerors of Hindostan? Weakness, like strength, is from within, of the +spirit, and not of sunshine. I would send you thither, that you may gain +new strength, new knowledge to carry out your dream and mine. Do not refuse +me the honour of preserving you. Do not forbid me to employ my wealth in +the only way which reconciles my conscience to the possession of it. I have +saved many a woman already; and this one thing remained--the highest of all +my hopes and longings--that God would allow me, ere I die, to save a man. +I have longed to find some noble soul, as Carlyle says, fallen down by the +wayside, and lift it up, and heal its wounds, and teach it the secret of +its heavenly birthright, and consecrate it to its King in heaven. I have +longed to find a man of the people, whom I could train to be the poet of +the people." + +"Me, at least, you have saved, have taught, have trained! Oh that your care +had been bestowed on some more worthy object!" + +"Let me, at least, then, perfect my own work. You do not--it is a sign +of your humility that you do not--appreciate the value of this rest. You +underrate at once your own powers, and the shock which they have received." + +"If I must go, then, why so far? Why put you to so great expense? If you +must be generous, send me to some place nearer home--to Italy, to the coast +of Devon, or the Isle of Wight, where invalids like me are said to find all +the advantages which are so often, perhaps too hastily, sought in foreign +lands." + +"No," she said, smiling; "you are my servant now, by the laws of chivalry, +and you must fulfil my quest. I have long hoped for a tropic poet; one +who should leave the routine imagery of European civilization, its meagre +scenery, and physically decrepit races, for the grandeur, the luxuriance, +the infinite and strongly-marked variety of tropic nature, the paradisiac +beauty and simplicity of tropic humanity. I am tired of the old images; of +the barren alternations between Italy and the Highlands. I had once dreamt +of going to the tropics myself; but my work lay elsewhere. Go for me, and +for the people. See if you cannot help to infuse some new blood into the +aged veins of English literature; see if you cannot, by observing man in +his mere simple and primeval state, bring home fresh conceptions of beauty, +fresh spiritual and physical laws of his existence, that you may realize +them here at home--(how, I see as yet but dimly; but He who teaches the +facts will surely teach their application)--in the cottages, in the +play-grounds, the reading-rooms, the churches of working men." + +"But I know so little--I have seen so little!" + +"That very fact, I flatter myself, gives you an especial vocation for my +scheme. Your ignorance of cultivated English scenery, and of Italian art, +will enable you to approach with a more reverend, simple, and unprejudiced +eye the primeval forms of beauty--God's work, not man's. Sin you will +see there, and anarchy, and tyranny, but I do not send you to look for +society, but for nature. I do not send you to become a barbarian settler, +but to bring home to the realms of civilization those ideas of physical +perfection, which as yet, alas! barbarism, rather than civilization, has +preserved. Do not despise your old love for the beautiful. Do not fancy +that because you have let it become an idol and a tyrant, it was not +therefore the gift of God. Cherish it, develop it to the last; steep your +whole soul in beauty; watch it in its most vast and complex harmonies, +and not less in its most faint and fragmentary traces. Only, hitherto you +have blindly worshipped it; now you must learn to comprehend, to master, +to embody it; to show it forth to men as the sacrament of Heaven, the +finger-mark of God!" + +Who could resist such pleading from those lips? I at least could not. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND BROTHERHOOD. + + +Before the same Father, the same King, crucified for all alike, we had +partaken of the same bread and wine, we had prayed for the same spirit. +Side by side, around the chair on which I lay propped up with pillows, +coughing my span of life away, had knelt the high-born countess, the +cultivated philosopher, the repentant rebel, the wild Irish girl, her +slavish and exclusive creed exchanged for one more free and all-embracing; +and that no extremest type of human condition might be wanting, the +reclaimed Magdalene was there--two pale worn girls from Eleanor's asylum, +in whom I recognized the needlewomen to whom Mackaye had taken me, on +a memorable night, seven years before. Thus--and how better?--had God +rewarded their loving care of that poor dying fellow-slave. + +Yes--we had knelt together: and I had felt that we were one--that there was +a bond between us, real, eternal, independent of ourselves, knit not by +man, but God; and the peace of God, which passes understanding, came over +me like the clear sunshine after weary rain. + +One by one they shook me by the hand, and quitted the room; and Eleanor and +I were left alone. + +"See!" she said, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood are come; but not as +you expected." + +Blissful, repentant tears blinded my eyes, as I replied, not to her, but to +Him who spoke by her-- + +"Lord! not as I will, but as thou wilt!" + +"Yes," she continued, "Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood are here. Realize +them in thine own self, and so alone thou helpest to make them realities +for all. Not from without, from Charters and Republics, but from within, +from the Spirit working in each; not by wrath and haste, but by patience +made perfect through suffering, canst thou proclaim their good news to +the groaning masses, and deliver them, as thy Master did before thee, +by the cross, and not the sword. Divine paradox!--Folly to the rich and +mighty--the watchword of the weak, in whose weakness is God's strength made +perfect. 'In your patience possess ye your souls, for the coming of the +Lord draweth nigh.' Yes--He came then, and the Babel-tyranny of Rome fell, +even as the more fearful, more subtle, and more diabolic tyranny of Mammon +shall fall ere long--suicidal, even now crumbling by its innate decay. +Yes--Babylon the Great--the commercial world of selfish competition, +drunken with the blood of God's people, whose merchandise is the bodies +and souls of men--her doom is gone forth. And then--then--when they, the +tyrants of the earth, who lived delicately with her, rejoicing in her sins, +the plutocrats and bureaucrats, the money-changers and devourers of labour, +are crying to the rocks to hide them, and to the hills to cover them, from +the wrath of Him that sitteth on the throne--then labour shall be free at +last, and the poor shall eat and be satisfied, with things that eye hath +not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to +conceive, but which God has prepared for those who love Him. Then the +earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the +sea, and mankind at last shall own their King--Him. in whom they are all +redeemed into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God, and He shall reign +indeed on earth, and none but His saints shall rule beside Him. And then +shall this sacrament be an everlasting sign to all the nations of the +world, as it has been to you this day, of freedom, equality, brotherhood, +of Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good-will toward +men. Do you believe?" + +Again I answered, not her, but Him who sent her-- + +"Lord, I believe! Help thou mine unbelief!" + +"And now farewell. I shall not see you again before you start--and ere you +return--My health has been fast declining lately." + +I started--I had not dared to confess to myself how thin her features had +become of late. I had tried not to hear the dry and hectic cough, or see +the burning spot on either cheek--but it was too true; and with a broken +voice I cried: + +"Oh that I might die, and join you!" + +"Not so--I trust that you have still a work to do. But if not, promise me +that, whatever be the event of your voyage, you will publish, in good time, +an honest history of your life; extenuating nothing, exaggerating nothing, +ashamed to confess or too proclaim nothing. It may perhaps awaken some rich +man to look down and take pity on the brains and hearts more noble than +his own, which lie struggling in poverty and misguidance among these foul +sties, which civilization rears--and calls them cities. Now, once again, +farewell!" + +She held out her hand--I would have fallen at her feet, but the thought +of that common sacrament withheld me. I seized her hand, covered it with +adoring kisses--Slowly she withdrew it, and glided from the room-- + +What need of more words? I obeyed her--sailed--and here I am. + + * * * * * + +Yes! I have seen the land! Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea, "while +parting day dies like the dolphin," there it lay upon the fair horizon--the +great young free new world! and every tree, and flower, and insect on it +new!--a wonder and a joy--which I shall never see.... + +No,--I shall never reach the land. I felt it all along. Weaker and weaker, +day by day, with bleeding lungs and failing limbs, I have travelled the +ocean paths. The iron has entered too deeply into my soul.... + +Hark! Merry voices on deck are welcoming their future home. Laugh on, +happy ones!--come out of Egypt and the house of bondage, and the waste and +howling wilderness of slavery and competition, workhouses and prisons, into +a good land and large, a land flowing with milk and honey, where you will +sit every one under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and look into the +faces of your rosy children--and see in them a blessing and not a curse! +Oh, England! stern mother-land, when wilt thou renew thy youth?--Thou +wilderness of man's making, not God's!... Is it not written, that the +days shall come when the forest shall break forth into singing, and the +wilderness shall blossom like the rose? + +Hark! again, sweet and clear, across the still night sea, ring out the +notes of Crossthwaite's bugle--the first luxury, poor fellow, he ever +allowed himself; and yet not a selfish one, for music, like mercy, is twice +blessed-- + + "It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." + +There is the spirit-stirring marching air of the German workmen students + + Thou, thou, thou, and thou, + Sir Master, fare thee well.-- + +Perhaps a half reproachful hint to the poor old England he is leaving. What +a glorious metre! warming one's whole heart into life and energy! If I +could but write in such a metre one true people's song, that should embody +all my sorrow, indignation, hope--fitting last words for a poet of the +people--for they will be my last words--Well--thank God! at least I shall +not be buried in a London churchyard! It may be a foolish fancy--but I have +made them promise to lay me up among the virgin woods, where, if the soul +ever visits the place of its body's rest, I may snatch glimpses of that +natural beauty from which I was barred out in life, and watch the gorgeous +flowers that bloom above my dust, and hear the forest birds sing around the +Poet's grave. + +Hark to the grand lilt of the "Good Time Coming!"--Song which has cheered +ten thousand hearts; which has already taken root, that it may live and +grow for ever--fitting melody to soothe my dying ears! Ah! how should there +not be A Good Time Coming?--Hope, and trust, and infinite deliverance!--a +time such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the +heart of man to conceive!--coming surely, soon or late, to those for whom a +God did not disdain to die! + + * * * * * + +Our only remaining duty is to give an extract from a letter written by John +Crossthwaite, and dated + +"GALVESTON, TEXAS, _October, 1848_. + +... "I am happy. Katie is happy, There is peace among us here, like 'the +clear downshining after rain.' But I thirst and long already for the +expiration of my seven years' exile, wholesome as I believe it to be. My +only wish is to return and assist in the Emancipation of Labour, and give +my small aid in that fraternal union of all classes which I hear is surely, +though slowly, spreading in my mother-land. + +"And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to my promise to him, +I transmit to you. On the very night on which he seems to have concluded +them--an hour after we had made the land--we found him in his cabin, dead, +his head resting on the table as peacefully as if he had slumbered. On a +sheet of paper by him were written the following verses; the ink was not +yet dry: + +"'MY LAST WORDS. + +"'I. + +"'Weep, weep, weep, and weep, + For pauper, dolt, and slave; + Hark! from wasted moor and fen, + Feverous alley, workhouse den, + Swells the wail of Englishmen: + "Work! or the grave!" + +"'II. + +"'Down, down, down, and down, + With idler, knave, and tyrant; + Why for sluggards stint and moil + He that will not live by toil + Has no right on English soil; + God's word's our warrant! + +"'III. + +"'Up, up, up, and up, + Face your game, and play it! + The night is past--behold the sun!-- + The cup is full, the web is spun, + The Judge is set, the doom begun; + Who shall stay it?'" + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALTON LOCKE, TAILOR AND POET *** + +This file should be named 8allk10.txt or 8allk10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8allk11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8allk10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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